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William Waters III - N7IPY

Amateur Radio Projects

I have been a ham for more years than I care to admit.  My call is N7IPY and I hold a General Class license.  I stopped working with Radio projects a number of years ago after I started flying as there are only so many hours in a day and I did not have time to spend on radio projects.  Almost 3 years ago I got involved in a C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team) organization sponsored by the Metro Fire District here in the East Sacramento area.  I started training with the Communications unit of that group known as ART  (Amateur Radio Team) and now I am the team Co-Leader and one of the trainers for the group.  Below are some of my radio projects from the last few years.

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This  is a low power 20Meter SSB Tranceiver kit.  It was a fun but complex kit taking a week of evenings to assemble.  Then I thought it would be fun to design a Digital Dial with a simple processor design that would control a few functions of the radio.  The details for this project click the title.

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I own an old FT-100D Multimode all band 100 Watt radio that is in full working order so I thought I would mount it semi-permanent as a mobile unit.  I decided on a Screw-Driver-Antenna and chose the Alpine Screw Driver Antenna as it looked to fit my need and was in a price range I could almost afford.  Click the title to read about my Antenna Installation.

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Here you can find information about my RMS Winlink Public Access Server station that is on HF and VHF Packet. 
This station is open to all that can reach it, 24/7/24 on both 40 Meters or VHF.  It was an interesting project and it offers something back to the Ham community.

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This is my Emergency Communications deployment Go-Box project.  I wanted a single box that had everything equipment wise that I night need for an initial Emergency Communications Deployment. 
Click the title to see my design for a Go-Box design.

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I also have been working on a QRP Go-Box, or more of a QRP Go-Bag.
The Idea is to make this very protable and light weight all mode HF/VHF/UHF station and to be self contained. 
Click the title to see my portable QRP hardware setup.

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This pasge outlines my D-STAR HotSpot project that I use at my home QTH.  It allows me access into the D-STAR network eventhough I am a little to far away to to bring up the closest repeater without using the roof mounted external antenna. 
This project allows me to be portable 'backyard'.

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This is my first Small Magnetic Loop Antenna project.  It is designed to work from 30 Meters up to 10 Meters.  It is made from copper water tubing.  Initial tests look good. 
I still a lot to do to make it usable as I plan to add remote tuning to the design so it can be mounted at the back of the property making it not too visible to the neighbors.

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This purpose of this project was to repackaged an early model HF-Packer Amplifier used with the FT-817 radio.  The original packaging was very simple and not up to what I wanted in a chassis and I did not like the sharp edges of the external heat sink.  This is how I solved that problem.

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I picked up an old Heathkit SB-200 Linear Amplifier. This is what I did to restore it to ‘Better Than’ new. .

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(C) 2007 - 2012  William Waters   Last Updated January 25, 2012