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The CMOS chip is due to arrive soon so i’ll have a complete kit ready for my blundering soldering skills to knacker up. I’ve done a bit of research as to the best way to solder some of these tiny little monsters and I think it’ll be a bit of achallenge to get them all to work as intended and look pretty.

So the goal for this kit is to solder it so it works and not to make it look pretty!

Now that I’m back into the land of semi normality and that sleep is now a thing of the past my HF Lite arrived a few days ago and I’ve had a good look through the parts and I think that I may have bitten quite a big chunk for my first home brew project

After seeking a bit of advice on how to solder the SMD’s I’ve got a few choice as to how I get the components on the board and get them soldered. One thing for sure is that it ain’t going to be a pretty build. I’ll be starting on the build at the weekend and I’ll be posting the progress and without sounding too negatives some of the problems that I encounter.

A few useful links though

SDR official website

Softrock Yahoo Group

Build instructions

Having run the active antenna for a month or so it seems fairly obvious that it’s just not pulling in the signals. I’ve swapped it for a wire antenna with a 1:1 balun. The wire is approximately 25m long with a 10m coax feeder. It’ll be positioned in a suitable spot in the garden. From early results it’s head and shoulders above the active and electrically small loft one.

The suns having a lazy autumn. or spring depending on you hemisphere. The numbers through on the ARRL propagation bulletin make for a fairly low reading with what is reported to be a a bit of a pattern where a sunspot appears for a few days then is quick to disappear. The chart below shows the decline and makes for interesting reading / viewing. As expected there are a number of theories but as yet I’m not sure what it tells us.

Searching through the emails?I receive during the day can sometimes be a bit of a chore. Other times some really useful informations comes to light. The softrock yahoo group has the latest news on the various softrock product but now they’ve annouced that the v9.0 if the HF lite has been released. the official softrock radio website has information on how to purchase the kits.