QRP By The Bay, Chelsea Beach, Melbourne, Saturday 8th February 2020

QRP By The Bay is a regular meet-up of amateur radio operators, makers and experimenters , Chelsea Beach, Melbourne. On Saturday 8th February the weather was summery, a warm 28 degrees C, but windy, 35km/h blow from the south-east. A strong turn out resulted in lots of conversation, show-and-tell, and general story telling. The video shows some of the faces and activity. If you want to know more about any of the people or projects drop a comment below.

I was expecting Peter VK3YE to take his wade-tenna into the shallows for some pedestrian mobile contacts, but the wind made that option risky. No matter, there was plenty to see and discuss at the tables.

Thanks to Peter VK3YE for continuing this series of ‘eyeball’ QSOs, a now regular and much appreciated date on the amateur radio calendar in Melbourne.

A compact Arduino, si5351 VFO with Keyer and OLED display

The remarkable compact transceivers of Peter DK7IH inspired me to dream up a compact transceiver of my own. This project would be an experiment on a shirt-pocket scale — not as dense as some of Peter’s rigs, but small on my scale. Starting with the PLL VFO/controller along the familiar lines of Raduino (Arduino Nano and si5351), I sketched out a physical design, and it became clear that the display choice would dictate the size of this module. Where small displays are concerned, there’s only one option … OLED.