(tr)uSDX Forum

The ARRL Handbook has a good description of the Tayloe mixer / detector. The Handbook is expensive. I bought mine 7 years old for $10 at a ham radio swap meet. If you don't already have one, check your local library. Here's a good YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBk3jIxszI You're rig...

This advice won't be much help if your headers are already soldered to your board. The plastic strip of the header can't take much heat before melting, so repair after installation would either mean replacing the male pin header completely OR clipping the pins shorter and then smoothing off the ends...

Ohwenzelph, I have seen you replying with helpful answers to many people posting on the forum here. Thank you. All I can offer is an opinion. If your components have been stored indoors in a reasonably comfortable indoor environment, I'd say no, don't bother with a drying-out step. If you live in a ...

Link remains broken. I think Manuel did a global search-and-replace and it affected the link. Easy to fix though, if you edit the URL in your browser. Just replace *Rxxxx*_Short.pdf to the name of the company followed by _Short.pdf. The only complexity is that the link is case-sensitive. It has to b...

I've updated my story to say that the chips I found on development boards at Amazon are presumably clone chips, not the authentic Microchip ATmega328p. Mouser currently has a small inventory of ATmega328p-aur parts which I'm hoping are compatible enough. It's hard to figure out what the subtype lett...

@af7ux: Sorry for this slow reply; I don't come here often. Thanks for the offer, but no. I've already used the second of three boards, harvesting another ATmega328 microcontroller for someone else's project. Buying these development boards from Amazon is a good way to obtain the MCU chip quickly an...

This is an interesting idea, thanks for telling us about it. Have you actually done this on a surface mount device? The articles you linked describe boards for resetting fuses on DIP (dual inline pin) devices. DIPs are much easier to deal with than a surface mount chip that's already soldered in pla...

Desoldering anything but the easiest components can be difficult without hot air equipment. I recently learned about desoldering alloy. I mentioned it in my post yesterday: https://forum.dl2man.de/viewtopic.php?t=401 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OOBIJ6I It's strange stuff. It doesn't really want to ...

Probably most people who have damaged their boards did it by zapping them with electrostatic discharge. The ISP pin header is said to be very susceptible. When I read about that I got an anti-ESD mat to work on, and I ground the mat and have the wrist strap on whenever I’m working with the boards. 2...

I’m not hearing any CW or USB / LSB activity on any bands so I’m trying to debug my boards. I do hear static; the noise floor. I also hear occasional strong tones as I tune around, but I think these are just hash from local electronics. Antenna is a magloop. My FT817nd hears reasonable numbers of pe...