g1dva Beacon Kit

Having splashed out on a g1dva beacon kit from Kanga-UK last weekend at the NARSA rally, I thought it would be politic to make it before seeing the man himself at our WARC meeting on Tuesday...

The build instructions are available from the Kanga website. I followed them and ended up with a working beacon - but not until I realized that the crystal was dead. I've never killed a crystal before by soldering it in place, but I guess there's a first time for everything.

Here's the made-up kit (now sporting a socket for the xtal and a temporary 3.579... colour-burst crystal for testing)

The beacon worked first time (second time, if you count the dead crystal), announcing its presence with a QRQ version of my call (note to self: that's a good idea - must work it into the multi-mode beacon). Here's the FSKCW signal from the beacon, locally captured...

Here's the QRSS CW output too...

I guess (given similar experience with my own beacons) that a small enclosure will help the frequency stability.

Once I have a replacement 3.5 MHz crystal, I'll put the beacon on the air and tell you of any reception reports.

...-.- de m0xpd