FISTS Morse Tutor

G

GM0WEZ

Super Member
The FISTS morse tutor is a very easy build. About £25ish. You get a discount if you are a FISTS member. It plays words, letters, numbers, callsigns and has a contest mode with reports and different CW note pitches. Flip it into 'turbo' mode and it will do 60 wpm. (Unfortunately, I can't...)

Also has a 10 minute timer for practice sessions to protect your sanity!

You have to box it up yourself - the pic shows my effort.
 

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You say that you boxed this yourself?

I noticed that there is the FISTS logo on the bottom right hand corner of your tutor, so did you make the overlay yourself somehow?

Or were there decals supplied with your kit (none with mine, which I've yet to assemble :-[ )?

73, Mark...
 
The decals are DIY.

You can buy 'waterslide paper' on ebay for either laser or inkjet printers, depending on what you have.

You can print anything in any colour but not, of couse, white. So it helps to use dark letters on a reasonably light coloured enclosure.

Then you just slide the decals off in a dish of water, just like putting RAF roundels on Airfix models. Then you need to spray with clear varnish to fix them.

It's a good balance between looking reasonably professional without too much work/expense
 

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Forgot to say - the inkjet paper has to be sprayed with varnish after printing, and then again once mounted on the enclosure. The laser ink is water-fast so just needs spraying after mounting.

 
I'm very intrigued by the QRP rig in your last picture, any chance of getting some more details on it?
 
Hi Stefan,

I no longer have it - I sold it to a Dutch amateur on ebay a while ago.

The idea was to have a self contained QRP radio with atu, swr indicator and power supply all in one box. The inspiration came from the Spillsbury SBX radios used in the Canadian wilderness: http://www.matthewkendall.com/electronics/sbx-11a

I'm ok at kit-building but not at designing and building from scratch. So it was made from a Small Wonder labs SW40+ transceiver kit. They are good radios, nice superhet receiver, and cover the whole CW portion of the band, but no AGC and no RIT,and only 2.5 watts out. That said, contacts across Europe were straightforward enough. I added a Tayloe SWR bridge with LED to indicate tune and a end fed half wave tuner, and power from 3 x 18650 lithium cells. Unfortunately the radio works best on 13.8v and 2 x 3.6v didn't last long enough. I was going to either use a buck boost converter or switch to 10 x NiMH AA cells, but was involved with other projects so sold it on.

The Peli case was quite expensive but very robust. The top panel is made from 5mm perspex (A4 sheets of which are cheap on ebay). Waterslide decals of course.

I liked the robustness but the box is a bit bulky for long backpacking trips, and you also need wire antenna, earbuds, key and a mast.

Current QRP setup is a Venus 3 band qrp radio that gives 5 watts and works down to 8v or so, with a 3 band trapped EFHW antenna. Pics are here: https://reflector.sota.org.uk/t/tactical-pouches-from-ebay/22516
 
Very nice setup Peter!

I looked at the Venus rig a while ago but when I was ready to hit the button, Kanga was out of stock again. Now I've pretty much made up my mind in the TX-500 so saving the shekels for that, but there is something very compelling about such a small and neat setup.

Sorry for taking this topic so far off course :-)
 
I think in this case going off-topic is very useful!

TX-500 looks super 'tacticool' and impressively low current consumption for any portable radio, and especially so given the multimode capability, panadaptor, etc.

I think for a one day trip or SOTA activation, or holiday home/cabin use it is absolutely ideal, and it has the 'trail-friendly radio' design with controls on top.

I do some one day SOTA activations but more commonly I do multi day backpacking trips in the highlands so I have about 12kg of camping gear and food. Hence my ultralight minimalist approach.

A really compact radio really means surface mount, which for me (and probably many others)  means buying ready built gear. Also we are now spoilt for choice with ready-built small QRP radios. Not so long ago the only real option was to build a kit.

Going even more off topic  ::) I see some backpackers are using network radios. I had discounted these as you cannot get a mobile phone signal in most of the wild places I go. However I saw in one of the magazines someone using them with a tiny (maybe 30cm long) yagi strapped to a nearby tree and getting contacts quite easily from remote places. Of course, it's not quite the same as 'real' radio. Also, it might be okay for many parts of the Scottish highlands but not, I think in northern Canada or even northern Scandinavia.



 
Low current drain and the general ruggedness are what I like about the TX-500 and as I am most likely to use it for SOTA/POTA/WWFF or camping, it is ideal for my needs. I'm working on a few portable power options involving 18650s that should allow a modular approach to power based on the length of the activation too. I have a case that will fit the radio and the EFHW and a short length of coax along with either a LiPO or Li-Ion battery pack without being too bulky, so my wife can't even complain that I bring too much stuff camping. It helps that the flashlights we use also use 18650 cells, and that the charger can be connected to a USB powerbank or even the USB output solar panels, so it all adds up to a lot of options.

For me networked radio just hasn't pressed the right buttons. It has it's uses, but to me it feels too much like using Skype, a feeling I never had with digital voice modes like DMR or D-Star as I was always using a handheld radio. Each to their own of course :-)
 
I like the 18650 lithium cells - they are light, cheapish and seem to last pretty good.

I once tried building a qrp rig with a solar panel on top - I think the panel power specs were optimistic as it never gave enough juice to keep the battery topped up. A separate larger panel would have been better.

Of course, with a Waterlily https://www.waterlilyturbine.com/ I guess one could run a QRP station from the back of beyond indefinitely!

 
I came across this guys site a few years ago now. He takes off the shelf radios and does some amazing mods to them.

https://radioset-go.com/prestashop/index.php

As for 18650 batteries, we have a lot of laptop batteries at work that are discarded in the WEEE waste when the inbuilt charge controllers deem the battery 'critical' and will no longer charge in their host laptop. In reality they are fine. I just strip them down (carefully, they can store a lot of energy), then use a Nitecore charger to give them a charge.

Firstly I've found that so far EVERY laptop pack that was supposed 'faulty', all of the cells have charged fine and work well when discharged. Secondly, they have a very low self discharge rate once the controller is removed. I have cells here that I charged nearly four years ago, and still show above 4V when checked. In fact many of them show about 4.12-4.15V (they are charged to 4.2V).

The holders for them are easily available, and will take anything from one up to four cells in series. There are other holders that will take four or more cells, but each 'bay' has individual connections for positive and negative, so you can configure them as you wish.

I've deliberately tried a shorted test on a few of them, and found that they easily produced 38-40 Amps! Not bad for 'critical' batteries ;D

73, Mark...

 
I love some of the things Radioset-GO does, but boy is he pricey!

I've been trying to get hold of old laptop batteries, and so far have drawn a complete blank on all the places I've tried. The local computer shop refused point blank to give me any, and any of the ads I've put on FB and such have had zero response...
 
Another advantage of ex-laptop 18650 batteries is they are usually from 'good' makes like Samsung, Sanyo, etc.

The Chinese brand 18650s are somewhat variable.
 
GM0WEZ said:
Another advantage of ex-laptop 18650 batteries is they are usually from 'good' makes like Samsung, Sanyo, etc.

The Chinese brand 18650s are somewhat variable.
Click to expand...

A few of the guys here at work have found that. One particular one ordered some 5200mAh 18650 cells from China, and when they arrived they looked fine.

Upon closer inspection he noticed that the sleeving on the cells seemed unusually thick, so he decided to peel it off from one of them. Underneath was the real label, they were good old 2100mAh cells.

Someone suggested that maybe the cells had been mis-labelled in the first place, so the cells were tested on a battery analyser. Despite several test cycles the best capacity managed equated to around 1100mAh for one of the cells tested, and 1300mAh for the second one! :o

73, Mark...
 
I didn't think that there were any legitimately available with a capacity over 3300mAh? That's the largest Samsung cells I've been able to find anyway.
 
MI0PYN said:
I didn't think that there were any legitimately available with a capacity over 3300mAh?
Click to expand...

Just realised while charging my torch battery, it too is 5000mAh.

The brand name is "Garberiel" (see photo below).

73, Mark...
 

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