OT: Christmas project with the kids

I managed to heat up the soldering iron and melt some solder during the weekend before Christmas, but it wasn't in pursuit of anything ham radio related.  I have a RockMite kit that I've been meaning to get to, but never seem to get around to it.  But no, this weekend's project was done with and for the kids.

While bumming around Radio Shack a few weeks ago I stumbled across the neatest little Velleman 3D Christmas tree kit!  It didn't look to complicated and was only $7 so I decided to give it a shot with the kids.  Now keep in mind, my kids (the two that were most interested in helping) are 7 and 10 so I couldn't do anything too complex, but this looked right up their alley!

Just like the last little project that I did with the kids, they are still too young to solder, but they can sort parts by type, sort resistors by color code and now they are old enough to actually put the components onto the board as well!  This kit comes with two boards that makes of the planform shape of a Christmas tree.  This worked out perfectly as each kiddo was able to get one board to work on.

The project did not require much in the way of tools.  A soldering iron, some solder, and some snips.




























Our process was this:

1. The kids sorted out the components into groups together (capacitors, resistors, transistors, etc).
1. My youngest daughter, the eldest of the group at the bench, took on the task of sorting the resistors by color code, learning a bit about said code in the process.
2. Each kid got a board, and with some help from Dad found the marked locations for each component (resistor X goes into the R1 location).
3. They then bent the legs of the components so that they would fit into the holes in the board.
4. As one kiddo got a part mounted, Daddy would solder it on and trim the excess off.  By then, the next kiddo would have a part mounted and the process would continue.
5. We continued on in this vain until all of the parts were on the board (first resistors, then capacitors, then transistors, and finally LEDs).
6. Once that was done, Daddy soldered on the battery leads and joined the two halves together with jumpers (the hardest part of the project).

All in all it was a fun little project that took about and hour and a half from start to finish, and we ended up with an ornament that we can use for many Christmases to come!  

Here is a shot of the eager little technicians that help during the build out, along with the fruit of their labors:

And a close up of the finished tree:

And a couple of shots with the lights off to show the blinking motion of the LEDs:

This was a fun little project and helped to keep the kiddos entertained while Mommy was a work!  I hope to get back to some radio related projects in the near future, like maybe that RockMite kit, or installing a 4BTV vertical, or building a 12el yagi for 2m, or a "turnstile" moxon for satellite work on field day, or you get the idea...  Maybe during some vacation time that I am planning on taking in January...  Time will tell.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Ham Shack Update

Well, with the exception of finding a Kenwood SP-120 speaker, I have just about completed a station that any ham from the late 80's to early 90's would be proud to call their own!

Just to brag (or whine, depending on time of day, my mood, and your point of view) my collection contains:

HF:

Kenwood TS-440S/AT (with FM module, IC-10 kit, Voice Module, tuner, and ALL optional filters)

Kenwood PS-430 power supply

Kenwood SP-430 speaker

Kenwood AT-250 outboard tuner (for 160m)

Kenwood IF-232C computer interface

Kenwood MC-50 microphone

VHF:

Kenwood TR-9000 (with ComSpec SS-64 tone module) 2m All Mode radio

Kenwood PS-20 power supply

Kenwood SP-120 speaker

Kenwood BO-9 base shelf

Kenwood TR-7730 (2m FM for APRS)

Mirage B-34-G amplifier with GaAsFET per-amp

UHF:

Kenwood TR-9500 70cm All Mode radio

Kenwood PS-20 power supply

Kenwood BO-9A base shelf

NEED THE SPEAKER!  ;-)

MISC:

SignaLink USB soundcard interface

Homebrew soundcard interface (cost <$20 and works just as well as the Signalink)

Homebrew coax tester

Homebrew LED ambiance lights ;-)

Homebrew PTT mic to PC interface

Wouxon KG-UV3D dual-band HT

Heath bench variable power supply

Radio Shack SWR/power meter

MFJ-941D antenna tuner

Cheap CW key

MOBILE:

Yaesu FT-2900R

Galaxy DX959

Radio Shack HTX-10

Radio Shack PRO-2050 scanner

Homebrew radio console

ANTENNA:

RadioWavz G5RV Lite

Homebrew 2m moxon
Homebrew 2m 1/4 wave ground plane

While this may all seem like an impressive list of equipment, it can all be replaced with one radio these days.  The Kenwood TS-2000, the ICOM 7000, the Yaesu FT-857D will each do everything that this entire list does and take up less space and power in the process!  Plus the new radios have DSP to clean up those weak signals.  On the flip side, all of the equipment listed didn't cost me what a fully loaded TS-2000 would cost.  So, pros and cons to each approach.

Anyhow, here is a quick pic of my shack (ignore the ugly desk, its not finished, and I'm an engineer, not a skilled wood worker, although I generally enjoy trying).

So anywho, there you go.  A shadowy flight into the ham shack of a man who does not exist...  Sorry, couldn't resist the geeky Knight Rider reference.

73 and good night,

Richard, KK4JDO

OT: Science Project

This is way off topic, but I wanted to share a science project that I made with my 12 year old daughter last year for her 6th grade natural science class.  She was required to make a replica of a cell, whether animal or vegetable didn't matter, as long as it was accurate and labeled the components that make up a typical cell.

We decided that we wanted something that was a little more impressive than your run-of-the-mill school project made with noodles and play-dough.  So after much brainstorming and looking around hobby stores and Home Depot, we decided to go high-tech.

We constructed the cell walls out of plexiglass:

We made a cube out of six pieces of plexi, then build two spacers for inside the cube out of four more pieces.

Connected the pieces of plexi with clear packing tape:

We make sure to keep wrinkles to a minimum and used just enough tape to keep it together.

Added organelles by printing them on 8.5" x 11" labels:

We cut the shapes out using an Xacto hobby knife to be able to keep close to the lines. 

And gave it a little flash with a Sylvania LED "Light Flute":

This was a little tricky.  The hardest part was positioning it close enough to door to be able to turn it on, but not so close as to have it turn on by itself or break the plexi.  I tried cutting a hole in a sheet of plexi for the switch, but ended up breaking it, so we just pushed it up next to the "door" and left it like that.

The final result came out pretty well!  Here are a few pics of how it turned out.

With the lights in the room on:

And again with the lights off! 

We used clear labels to label the individual organelles.  This was a really fun project!  The teacher liked it so much that she kept it!!  It is on permanent display in her class room.  This is not a ham project, but it was still a lot of fun and I wanted to share.  Hopefully it gives you some ideas to use yourself.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Mobile mounts

I just got my new mounts in today for the radios that I built the console for in the last post!  I've been trying to figure out how to mount the antennas for my radios in such a way that they work good and look good.

When I only had a single radio in the truck I used a Comet hood-lip mount with matching coax connector.  This mount works okay, but it is a bit bulky.  I have never been a fan of lip mounts as they sometimes deform the surface that they are attached to.  This one seems to be large enough to spread the stress out over a fair area and may alleviate this issue.  I haven't seen any deformation in the six months that I've had it on.  Here is a pic of the truck with this mount using a 38" Diamond 2m/70cm half-wave antenna.

As I said, this mount seems to work pretty well. But I wanted to add a second or third antenna without starting to look like a four-poster bed.  So I decided to investigate stake-pocket mounts to relocate this antenna and add the additional antenna for the CB in the other stake pocket.  After much searching and reading I decided to order some mounts from Breedlove Mounts out of Gastonia, NC.  They had amazing reviews and seemed like a good deal.  I ordered the EZN Flat mount Model #14 (SO-239) and the Model #55 (3/8" stud) mounts.

I ordered these mounts Sunday evening off of their website, and the arrived with today's mail (Wednesday).  Pretty quick service!  The mounts appear to be extremely well made.  The craftsmanship is top notch and you definitely get your money's worth.  Here are a few pics, front and back, of the mounts that I ordered:

As you can see, these are extremely well made and rugged.  The only thing that I would suggest is adding some anti-seize compound to the screws.  This should keep the stainless steel screws from possibly spalling in the aluminum mount over time.

So once I moved the Diamond antenna from the front to the back and installed the Hustler FG-27S I was completely happy with the results.  The mounts were strong and stable, as well as providing a good grounding solution that is drilled and tapped into the bottom of the bracket.

This turned into more of a review than a project, but I hope that you've found it informative.  In an upcoming post I'll cover the coax runs and the DC grounding.  I need to do some additional grounding for the radios, as well as under the truck to try to quite it down electrically.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Mobile Install

I drive a 2011 Ford F-150, which is not the most radio friendly of vehicles.  It's not the worst, but it is not the best either.  When I only had a single radio in the truck, it was fairly easy to accomplish a professional looking installation.  As I added an 11m radio, and then a scanner, things got more difficult.  I ended up deciding that I needed to build a console in place to house these additional radios.

Yaesu FT-2900R

The first radio that I put into the truck was a Yaesu FT-2900R, which is a 2m mono-band ham radio.  This F-150 has a cubby hole at the bottom of the dash under the climate controls, which fit this radio like a glove while conveniently allowing plenty of air circulation to help cool this 75W solid aluminium beast.  I took out the cubby hole section, removed the back of it with a dremel, mounted the radio inside, and *bam*, it looked like original equipment (of course, that was before this blog, so no pictures).  The only downside was that it was a little difficult to see the top of the display on the FT-2900R to see if the offsets and tones were on at a glance.  This worked fine and dandy for months...

Galaxy DX-959

Enter a Galaxy DX-959 CB radio (if you're a ham and hate on CB'ers, keep it to yourself, I like to be able to talk to the truckers while making long trips, and sometimes it's just fun).  There is a world of difference between the way that a lot of CBs are built, versus the way that a lot of ham radios are built.  First off, they tend to be bulkier and flashier.  Needless to say, this wasn't going to fit in some handy preexisting pocket...

Radio Shack PRO-2050

Then along comes a scanner that I had originally purchased for use inside, then got into the whole scanner thing and decided that I wanted more features available in the house.  This makes for an interesting mounting challenge since there are no built-in mounting options on this scanner!  This brings us back to the whole idea of building a console for this all to fit into.

I decided that if I built a console, it would need to house all three radios, not just the two additions.  It would also need to look as stock as possible.  And lastly, it needed to be cheap!  I have seen some awesome custom professional installs but I have also seen some amazing price tags on them.  Since I'm not on an episode of "Pimp My Ride", I had to have an affordable solution.  I went through several iterations of the design, with the biggest issues being how to physically mount the radios in a small location.  My final solution was to build a box that fit between the vertical trim pieces on the dash, and angle back to the seat.  Originally, the radios were to be flush mounted, but to better make use of space I ended up angling the radios inside the new box.  Additionally, the original though was to have the box be independent of radios so that I could remove them individually for service.  However, space constraints dictated otherwise.

The end result was achieved by mocking up the sides of the box using cardboard to create a template, which was then cleaned up and copied to 11/32" plywood.  Once this was done, I was able to start finalizing the placement of the radios that I had mocked up earlier on the cardboard.  I ended up connecting the Galaxy radio directly to the plywood due to the space constraints mentioned earlier.  So much for a modular design.  

Since the scanner and the Galaxy radios were of similar size, they became the top and bottom spacers for the console.  I then used some scrap 1"x 2" to secure the two pieces of plywood together front and rear.  I used some scrap plywood to build a set of rails to hold the scanner in place, since it doesn't have a mobile mounting option.  The Yaesu presented a problem, since it was over two inches narrower than the other radios!  I ended up building spacers out of the 1" x 2", and mounting the 2m radio to them.

I then bought two $5 black rugs from Wal-Mart that closely resembled the carpet in my truck, and used a combination of 3M spray adhesive and carpet tacks to cover the sides of this contraction that I was putting together.  

Once all this was done, I had to take the whole thing apart to install it into the truck.  That turned out to be a pain in the rear!  Things that line up easily on the bench sometimes don't work so well in real life.  Such was the case with this console.  No tweaking was needed, but maneuvering around in the confines of the pick-up when I'm decidedly in the fat-boy club was a challenge indeed!  After much cussing and ill-will, things finally lined up properly and I was able to see my handy work:

As you can see, the radios are held securely, but it definitely needed a top!  This became in interesting problem.  How to come up with something that would fit?  Measuring would have been a major pain and I always mess that up anyway.  So back to the cardboard!  A snip here and a snip there, crumble it up, start over, and eventually, poof, a template is born!  I then transferred that to some 1/4" plywood that I had laying around and got busy with the jigsaw.  Eventually (and a few broken parts later) I had a top for the console!

But that's ugly, who wants to look at wood all day in a pickup?  So how to finish it?  I could paint it, but that would look funky.  I could stain it, but again, wood...  So I decided to cover it in vinyl.  A local upholstery shop was nice enough to give me enough material to take care of it, after declining to do it for me (they were afraid of breaking it, which I understand since I broke a few).  Again, the dilemma, how to actually do it?  The final decision was to use the spray adhesive again, and just razor blade the holes for the radios.  It actually turned out pretty well!  The only downside was that the end-grain was exposed, but a handy sharpie marker took care of that...LOL!

The finished product turned out like this:

Please no comments about the state of the dirt on my floorboard.  Consider it an experiment to see how long carpet survives without cleaning!

If I had it to do over again, I would try to cut the holes a little straighter with the jigsaw, and I would probably use some flat bar stock and build cradles for the radios to allow them to be serviced individually without massive effort and potentially marriage shattering language.

I'll attach a few more pictures, just because I can, and I am proud of this lash-up for some reason.  ;-)

Eventually, I intend to add an Icom IC-7000 to the mix.  I'm not sure whether I'll replace the Yaesu with it, or if I'll keep it so that I can monitor 2m or run APRS from the truck.  What do you think I should do?  Anyhow, if you've made it this far, you should be ready for bed, your insomnia has been cured!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Quarter Wave Ground-Plane Scanner Antenna (and 2m ham antenna)

One of the purchases that I got via eBay is a Radio Shack PRO-2050 police/fire/etc scanner.  I've never had a scanner before, and this was a cheap way to check it out.  I didn't get a pick of it before I ended up moving it from the shack to the truck, so I nabbed a picture of the internet.  Here is what my scanner looks like for those that haven't seen one:

Of course, since I had a scanner, I needed an antenna.  I'm just getting into the whole scanner thing, so I didn't want to spend too much on the antenna since I didn't pay much for the scanner (which is several years old).  One of the cheapest and easiest antennas to build is the quarter-wave ground plane.  I had some #8 ground wire laying around, as well as an SO-239 connector, so I was off to the races.

There are several good calculators out there to help get the proper dimensions, however, the math is fairly simple:

468 divided by Frequency in MHz gives you the half-wave element length in feet.
The quotient from above divided by 2 gives you the quarter-wave element length in feet.
Take the quotient from the last problem and multiply it by 12, the product is the length of element in inches.

For example, if you want an antenna for the middle of the 2m ham band: 

(468/146) / 2 x 12 = 19.23" which roughly equals 19 1/4" (since tape measures are in fractions of an inch).

It helps if you cut it a little long to allow you to tune to your specific location.  I actually cut mine for resonance on the public services band (~150MHz) since that is what is in use in my area, however, I get acceptable performance on the 2m band as well (about 1.7:1 VSWR).

Bending the ground plane elements down to 45 degrees brings the resistance of the antenna closer to 50 Ohms.  I'm not sure how this works exactly, maybe someone could drop a post and let me know why this works.

Here is a quick pic of the completed antenna.  The ground plane elements sag a bit with they are supporting the weight of the antenna.  They are straight when the antenna is suspended properly.

I also added vertical stubs for the 440MHz band as well as the 800MHz bands.  I didn't add ground plane elements for them as I'm not sure that I would see any benefit from doing so since I have the 2m elements.  Here is a close up of the verticals.

The last thing that I did was to seal the top of the connector with some silicone caulking.  This will help to keep water out of the coax, which would degrade the metal over time.  I would have used coax-seal, but I ran out and didn't feel like spending the money on this antenna.

And the final thing that I need to do, as you can tell from the background of the picture above, is clean my work bench!  It is getting crazy in there, so hopefully I can get that squared away soon.

My Parts List:

• 1 x SO-239 connector
• 8' of #8 grounding wire
• 4 x little screws
• Caulking

Time to Completion:

• About one hour for this one, mainly getting the jig built to solder the pieces together.

Next time I'll work on getting better pictures.  I tend to feel my way through some of these projects and don't think to document as I fumble along.

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

And... We're back...

To anyone that cares, sorry that I haven't posted in such a long  time.  My real job as a systems engineer at a children's hospital can get hectic at times.  On the bright side, we successfully opened a brand new, absolutely state of the art hospital in Orlando, FL.  Check it out at >here<

In addition to working some completely insane hours, I also moved from the massively over-sized house in the burbs to a marginally under-sized house in the country.  I'm into RC planes as well as Amateur Radio, so having a place with a lot more land allows me to enjoy both of my hobbies at home.  It also helps that this place is cheaper to heat and cool being that it is around 1,200 sq ft smaller that the last house.  Hopefully we'll be able to buy again in a few years.

I have had time for a few projects, mostly in the last week to two, and I have had some searches running on eBay and a few other sites (like QRZ.com).  As a result of these searches I have been able to acquire a Kenwood TR-9500 that I really wanted, as well as the matching BO-9A base and matching PS-20 power supply.  All that is left to have a complete system is the SP-120 speaker.  These occasionally show up on various sites, so I'll keep my eye peeled for it.  Here is a neat quick pic of my new rig:

The TR-9000 is on the middle shelf, left side (red freq display), and the TR-9500 is on the right side of the same shelf (green freq display).

Both of these rigs are all mode radios, so I have the ability to use single side band (SSB) in addition to CW and both narrow and wide band FM.  This is handy as some of the older satellites use SSB.  It also allows me to start dabbling in the world of VHF/UHF weak signal work, which takes place on SSB as well.  It is kind of neat to see how far you can talk on what are usually local area bands.  I am waiting on a Mirage B-108 to show up, which is an 80W amplifier that also contains a receive pre-amp to help with working low strength contacts.  One of these days I want to check out EME, or "moon-bounce", but that requires some seriously high-gain antenna arrays or even dishes (like re-tasked old satellite TV dishs, the big Ka band ones, not the little 18" DirecTV trashcan lids).

I also built a couple of quick desks since I no longer have an office.  I had to turn my "ham-shack" into a "ham-corner".  I built two identical desks out of 3/4" plywood and 1x12 whiteboard.  The main goal was to use as much vertical space as possible to maximize my storage options.  They are not quite finished yet, I still need to add trim, and build the linking section to make is a complete corner desk instead of two stand-alone desks.  Be at least I have a place to put my radios.  Here is a quick pic of the desk with my ham gear on it.  The other desk contains the gear that I use for work and is just to the left of it.  Not that anyone really cares how my shack is set up...lol...but I thought that someone might be interested in how my desk is designed.  Post a comment if you would like to see actual plans for them.  ;-)

One of the things that I am considering adding to the desks are a set of doors to hide the equipment when not in use.  I'm using the corner of my bedroom, and while I'm okay with seeing my stuff all the time, my XYL is only marginally impressed with the whole ham radio out in the open concept.  ;-)

Anyhow, I have a few other projects that I've been working on, and will work on adding those in additional posts this evening and in my "spare" time.  For now, have a good evening!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Wanted: Kenwood TR-9500

As you may have surmised from an earlier post where I added an SS-64 CTCSS encoder to a 2m radio, I already own a Kenwood TR-9000.  In fact, I have the complete station which includes the radio itself, as well as the matching SP-120 speaker, PS-20 power supply, and BO-9 base "shelf".  Here is a stock picture of this setup:

This is an absolutely awesome all-mode 2m VHF radio.  It can do Wide-Band FM, Narrow-Band, USB, LSB, and CW.  With the addition of the SS-64, it can also generate CTCSS tones to access repeaters.  The radio that I'm looking for is almost identical to this one, except it has a green display and uses UHF (70cm) frequencies.  Here is a closeup that I found online of that radio:

Ideally,  I would like to get the same complete station as above.  I think that it would be awesome to have a matched set of these radios.

The reason that I'm trying to acquire the aforementioned UHF radio is that I want to get into working other stations via Amateur Radio satellites.  Operating via this mode requires you to transmit on one frequency (called the uplink frequency) and receive on a different frequency (call downlink).  So you can see why I either need two radios, or one radio that is dual-band.  I could go the dual-band route, but I have to be honest, I have fallen in love with this awesome little TR-9000 and would love to use it for this purpose as well as 2m DX and chit-chatting on local repeaters.

There are several ham radio satellites in orbit, which always serves to amaze non-hams, as well as a ham radio installation on the International Space Station.  The station on the ISS sometimes acts like the other satellites, allowing you to talk to other Earth-based operators, and sometime operates as a normal ham station, allowing you to talk to the astronauts on the station itself.  How cool is that?!

Here is a diagram of one of the amateur radio satellites currently in orbit.  It is called Delfi-C3 (DO-64).  It was launched a few years ago by the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands as a student research project:

So, if you have one of these radios that you would like to part with at an even close to reasonable price, please let me know and maybe we can work something out!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Installing an IC-10 kit into a Kenwood TS-440S/AT HF Radio

I use Ham Radio Deluxe, or more specifically, Digital Master 780, for most of the digital mode communications that I do (usually just PSK31).  This software is great and does a lot of awesome stuff.  One of those cool things that you can do with HRD is rig control.  This makes it easy to jump from frequency to frequency (QSY in ham-speak) from within the software, instead of having to tune the radio and adjust the software accordingly.  It also keep your PC up-to-date on what frequency your radio is on for automated logging (really help for lazy guys like me).

Anyway, since I have an older radio, I had to modify it with an add-on kit, originally called the Kenwood IC-10 kit.  Kenwood no longer sell this kit since they made the TS-440 over 20 years ago.  However, since this kit is just basically two ICs (an 8251A and a TC4040BP), they can still be obtained.  I got mine off of eBay for $20.  This will allow 4800 baud serial communications via the ACC-1 interface on the back of the radio.

You can then use a round 6-pin DIN connector and a DB9 connector to make a serial interface cable.  Be careful as the TS-440 ACC-1 interface uses TTL voltages (5V) and serial wants to use 12V, you will either need to use Kenwood's IF-232 kit to match the voltages, or use a USB-to-serial converter with normally operates at TTL voltage levels (beware Prolific chipsets).

The install process is fairly simple, it took me around 20 minutes to complete the installation, including the time it took to take the pictures.


This is a picture of the kit itself, basically a serial UART and a CMOS timer chip.  Be sure to take static precautions, it would be a shame to do this install and have it not work due to fried ICs.  Basically, just stay at the same electrical potential as the radio and you'll be fine.  Never touch the chip without touching the radio first.  You could also use a static strap, although I generally find this to be overly cautious unless you are working with extremely sensitive parts (or extremely expensive ones).

Below is a picture of the radio that we are about to perform surgery one, to wit, a Kenwood TS-440S/AT:

Step one is to remove the top cover, which consists of eight screws (four on top, two on each side):

Be sure when you remove the top that you keep track of where the speaker cable goes so that you can put it back together when you are finished.  It is the yellow cable in this picture:

Next, flip it over and repeat the process with the bottom cover (nine screws this time, five on bottom, two on each side):

After that, remove the three screws on the bottom of the heat shield (silver part to the right with the three holes).  Also remove the four screws (two on each side) that hold the front panel in place:

Then remove the two screws that hold the top of the heat shield on:

Finally, you will be able to see the two sockets for the two ICs.  The part of the IC with the half-circle indicates the location of pin one.  This view is from the top of the radio, and pin one goes to the left:

I forgot to take a picture before I put the heat shield back on, but this is what it looks like with the IC installed.  I had to compress the pins on the ICs a bit to get them installed, which is common.  Just be careful not to bend them too much, else they may break.

Put the radio back together in the reverse order of above, and you will be off to the races!

 This is the rig control interface for HRD, you can see where I have set the frequency to the 20m PSK calling frequency:

And this is the radio after reassembly and being controlled by the PC.  The downside to this is that you cannot control the volume, nor can you get current S-level readings from the radio back into the software like you can with newer rigs.  But being able to control a 20 year old radio via the PC at all is awesome!!

Put this project together with the soundcard interface that I build in an earlier post, and you have a fully functional rig for digital modes on the ham bands!  This was a really easy and fun project and I gained a lot of useful functionality from my rig!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO

Signs of the times!

So I ordered this awesome LED lit sign for my ham shack!  It cost $28 from ProjectGM.  I liked it so much that I ordered several for my co-workers that have been laboring away with me trying to get our new hospital up and running!

You can get all different designs and all different colors of LED and wood bases.  Give them a holler and tell them that I sent you!  The business is run by a couple of hams in Ohio, my home state.  I get nothing from advertising for them, but they have an awesome product at a great price.

Anyhow, I thought that this was pretty awesome, so I wanted to share!

73,

Richard, KK4JDO