Monday 6 July 2015

Building the Frog Sounds v.3

 This little kit arrived a few days ago all the way from China. It is a 40m CW Transceiver, based around the NE602 plus a few other bits, and is supposedly capable to kicking out up to 3W.

All came reasonably well packed, although as usual the instructions are machine translated from the Chinese and next to useless! Most of it can be worked out easily enough, although two toroids that need to be wound have no turns information!


 Here it is next to my previous little Chinese transceiver kit, the Pixie. This one also has the odd quirk that the sockets all fit with a couple of degrees angle to them! Here its just mocked up -


All the resistors are 5-stripe types, which I hate trying to read, so ran the ohmeter over them all! They are as usual all vertical mounted. They are all fitted in this photo, and theres a lot extra left over! I suspect they are so cheap that so long as the minimum number are included they dont care how many more you get! All spares for me I suppose.


And, finally for today, with the lower profile sockets, IC sockets, and fixed inductors installed


There does seem to be some debate as to whether this is the same as a '49-er' kit, Ive no idea myself, never having built nor seen a '49-er' before!

Ive also just ordered a plastic case for the component tester I built some time ago - this is easier and probably cheaper than trying to fabricate one!

I also couldnt resist ordering a AM/FM broadcast portable radio kit! This is an old 1980's style analogue tuning radio which I fully expect to perform to its price! But hey, it'll be a bit of fun to build when it gets here.

I must get around to boxing up the Pixie and the SurfPI as well

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Martin,

If you already replied to my email, please disregard...

I read your Frog Sounds blog. You mentioned no turns information for L3 and L4. On the net I found a source that said 11 turns for L3 and 16 for L4. Do you know if that is correct?

I also saw where you used fixed-value coils for L3 and L4 in the final version.
What values did you choose?

Regards,
Joe, K8MP

Zak The Rabbit said...

Hi Joe

Yes 11t and 16t. I had to wind them, but all the parts were supplied in the kit, which came from Banggood. It was only the turns information that was missing

Gary Poland said...

I just finished building the Frog Sounds QRP transceiver. I also had to search online for the turns information for L3 and L4. When powered up C7 when up in flames. I replaced two more times from the spares received with the kit before getting a good capacitor. That makes me wonder about the quality of the remaining parts.
Other than that the only other problem is a shift in transmit frequency when first keyed. As long as I continue to send the frequency is stable otherwise it will shift up and down when first keyed. Anyone else experience this?

73, Gary W8PU

Gary Poland said...

Regarding my previous post on the Frog Sounds QRP transceiver transmit frequency shift. I have discovered that it can be eliminated by moving the gain pot W7 away from full clockwise. I have yet to determine why.

73, Gary W8PU

Gary Poland said...

Make that control W1 ... oops !!!

Anonymous said...

I have the same verzion of Frog Sounds QRP and I found that the documentations is a bit diferent. Can you tell me the resistance of R19?

73s
Boris, s53bb

Unknown said...

Hi

R3 R19 are 39 ohms

Cheers

Paul

m0pnn

Unknown said...

Just found this on banggoods web site.

quote..

Nice kit. I started with 11 turns on L4 as suggested here but measured it first with my LC meter, purchased here at banggod and quite accurate, it was 47uH! I reduced the turns down to 7-8 turns and it was in the 21-24uH range. L5 also landed up being less, 14 turns and it was bang on 1uH. L5 didn't seem to be as critical as L4 turns wise.

cheers

Paul

m0pnn