The New England Sci-Tech Amateur Radio Society will meet on-line and in-person on August 30, 2022 at 7 PM and feature: “Building an HF CW/SSB 20W Software Defined Transceiver” by Jack Purdum, W8TEE and Albert Peter, AC8GY.In this talk, Al and Jack will discuss their development of a SDT, which had its beginnings for them during Field Day 2019. Using a G90 running 15W to an EFHW thrown up into a tree, Portugal, Spain, France, and numerous stations in the U.S. were contacted. Jack and Al concluded that using low power SSB during FD was viable. The G90 suffered from various drawbacks, however, so they began designing the T41 on the drive home. Their design goals were: 1) Five band HF SDT – 80-10M; 2) SSB and CW; 3) Fuzzy QRP – user selectable power from 1-20W; 4) Self-contained – no PC, laptop, or tablet; 5) “Trunk Portable” – probably too big for SOTA, but okay for POTA; 6) Reasonable cost; and 7) Open Source – hardware and software.
Al Peter’s educational background is in Physics and Engineering, with degrees from University of Cincinnati and University of Michigan. Al has been an electronics builder/experimenter since high school, and earned his Extra Class license in 2010. He was founder and CEO of SDRC, a major consulting firm specializing in Mechanical CAD and related engineering and manufacturing software. He is co-author of Microcontroller Projects for Amateur Radio (ARRL) and Software Defined Radio Transceiver: Theory and Construction of the T41-EP Software Defined Transceiver. Al has a number of published articles on technical/amateur radio subjects in various magazines including QST, RadCom, and QRPQ.
Dr. Purdum has a Ph.D. in Economics and has been licensed since 1954. He was the founder and President of Ecosoft, a software house. He has authored 20 books, mostly on programming topics, and over three dozen articles in various publications (QST, CQ, QRP Quarterly, RadCom, etc). He and Al were awarded the Bennett Prize by the Radio Society of Great Britain “…to recognize a significant contribution or innovation which furthers the art of radio communication…” for their article on their Double-Double Magnetic Loop antenna. Dr. Purdum is an avid supporter of the Open Source initiative and QRP radio operations.
[For Zoom conference information, email Bob Phinney, K5TEC, at bobphinney -at- nescitech -dot- org or call 508-720-4179.]