Saturday 6 February 2021

Two radios need an antenna switch

Foolish I know, but if you have two radios then you need either two antenna or an antenna switch! I was fed up with unplugging one and plugging the other so I made this



The antenna switch and
my QCX+ and FDMDUO TRXs

The unselected radio is terminated by a 51R resistor, just in case you accidentally put it into TX mode!

Morse?

I am using the QCX+ at the moment to learn morse code - with the help of a random letter sender based on an Arduino Nano and a Si5351 sythesiser, transmitting on nominally 7023kHz (CW_LEARN code here). The QCX+ is tuned to 7023.0 after calibration using a GPS NMEA & PPS input (Menu 8.11 & 12).

By the way the "clock" (see pic above) under the QCX+ is my GPS clock, used also to provide NMEA and PPS signals to the QCX+. The GPS operates at 3V3, so I use a 3V3 <-> 5V converter to drive the QCX+.

For fun

I am playing also with a Pixie TRX, also tuned to 7023kHz and picking up the Arduino morse tutor.

The Pixie $5 TRX!


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