If you’d like to join the discussion of the S-Pixie local oscillator check out Ham Radio Homebrew Projects on reddit. The S-Pixie uses a Colpitts crystal oscillator. I found a great video by Craig (devttys0 on YouTube) that explains how it works and discusses design considerations. Local Oscillator Analysis I’ve been having fun following along with Craig’s …
New Reddit Community to Discuss Ham Radio Projects
I’ve started a new reddit community to discuss homebrew ham radio projects, r/HamRadioHomebrew. If you’re interested in homebrew ham radio projects or just like experimenting and tinkering with ham radio circuits, check out the new community and consider joining in on the discussion. It’s brand new so the current content is just my S-Pixie project, …
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S-Pixie: Pi Filter Analysis
I bought a couple of Super Pixie Transceivers when I was studying for my Technician license but only got around to playing with them now. The S-Pixie is a low power, CW transceiver that operates in the 40 meter band at a fixed frequency of 7.023 MHz. The design for the radio has evolved over …
Radio Circuits: Playing Around with a Crystal Radio
I’ve been taking it kind of slow with radio gear purchases since getting licensed. Being more interested in the technical aspects of the hobby, I’ve bought a few small kits to get started with but these have mostly sat waiting me getting the time to assemble them and getting an antenna up. I have built …
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Ham Radio: Got My Amateur Extra License
I got my Technician license at the end of March and given that the material covered in the General and Amateur Extra licenses builds on the previous material, I decided to continue on over the next two test dates to upgrade to these as well. There are many sources to study for the exams. For …
First Circuit Tests with the Digilent Analog Discovery 2
I got Digilent’s Ultimate Analog Discovery 2 Bundle to help with my journey into radio circuits. AD2 is an “USB oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and multi-function instrument that allows users to measure, visualize, generate, record, and control mixed-signal circuits of all kinds. ” Digilent is having a 15% discount sale making the bundle particularly attractive. The ultimate …
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A New Activity: Got My Ham Radio Technicians License
I’ve been spending some time off and on over the last several months porting the code generation part of cc65 to produce code for the 16-bit 65816 rather than its 8-bit cousins. I’m just doing a simple straight port at this point, only converting the generated code to take advantage of the 65816 16-bit registers …
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65816: Coding Efficiencies (last update: 3/1/2023)
I’m using this post to gather some of the coding efficiencies I’ve found in moving to the 65816. Most of these relate to porting my 6502-based Forth operating system. I’ve documented many of these findings in my code and I figured it was better to have them here in one place rather than there buried …
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65816: VDA/VPA Pins
I often use my blog as a reference of my previous work. Searching it today for VDA/VPA, I realized that I never wrote here about my findings regarding these 65816 pins. But I seem to recall having done so recently. Searching my social media more broadly I found that I had written a bit about …
65816: Running C-based Code Outside Bank 0 on the 65816
In my last post I showed that you could run cc65 compiled C-based code on the 65816. The main limitation was that the C-based segments had to be located in Bank 0 (and of course that the standard C-library functions were running with 8-bit registers and none of the 65816 added instructions or address modes). …
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