SPARC Member Projects and Articles

The projects and articles presented here are written by SPARC members and are from articles past, present and future in the club’s Waves newsletter.

This post describes the design and construction of a small manual z-match antenna tuner to compliment the (tr)uSDX transceiver. The (tr)uSDX is a small, inexpensive, QRP transceiver designed by PE1NNZ and DL2MAN. It is available as a kit or can be ordered pre-built. It has approximately...

27 May, 2023 /

The QDX is a 5W, 4-5 band (80, 40, 30, 20, and 60) transceiver that's manufactured by QRP Labs. It's available in kit form with the SMDs and ICs pre-soldered or fully assembled.It has a number of interesting features, not the least of which is...

17 December, 2022 /

This article describes my DIY attempt at building a manual antenna tuner. This is based on the plans for the ZM-2 tuner as sold by Emtech. My version suffers from considerable parts substitution, as I was building from whatever components I had available that seemed "near...

08 May, 2022 /

This is a simple "fox" transmitter and yagi/receiver that I built to use with our Scout group. It's designed to be very low cost (<$20), simple to construct, and robust enough to survive the rough and tumble of being handled by youth. The main components of the...

30 April, 2022 /

Two common, and often confused, types of "end fed" antennas are the end fed half wave (EFHW) and end fed long wire (EFLW or Random Wire). Both are single wire, multi-band antennas but they have one fundamental difference. This difference being that the former only...

22 April, 2022 /

Is it possible to combine the best parts of the flower-pot antenna design with a classic Windom / OCFD design? The idea is an antenna that's physically end-fed, but electrically off-centre fed. Then it'd only need a 4:1 balun to match, while also working on...

04 April, 2022 /

The FA-AS Automatic Antenna Selector enables four different antennas to be connected to the IC-7300. The cascade of coaxial switches are banished from my desk, and the correct antenna is now automatically selected per the transceiver's selected frequency. By Steven Pemberton, VK3PBJ...

03 November, 2020 /