Will Lohrbach

Well, yes it has been a long time since I have updated. Summer was a whirl wind of a time, as it is for most parents. Not to fear, winter is coming, as projects will be coming with it. I did get around to cleaning off the work bench tonight – which is a good…

Been a whirlwind couple of months, and the project blog has been neglected slightly. Now that spring has finally sprung in the “Northland”, outdoor projects will be the highest priority. Thankfully, I have a few projects that I needed to catch up on writing about, and this is one of them….. This is the first…

Hands free operation is a must. Two basic options exist to achieve it; voice operated transmit (VOX) or foot pedals. VOX has its time and place, but usually it is not the preferred method. Any noise in the shack can trigger the radio to transmit. I have used a foot pedal for some time on…

Radio Contesting? What does that mean? That question comes up a lot when I talk to non-hams about ham radio. Contesting, at least above 50 MHz, is one of the high points of my operating activities. To me, there is a challenge associated with it, and it gives me a chance to put the systems…

One of the features of my “control dashboard” is the ability to see the relative position of the rotatable antennas. I use a cheap rotator, which lacks positive position read-out. Instead, it uses a timing circuit to figure out roughly where it is. Although this is a heck of a rigged up setup, it works.…

One of my first full blown Raspberry Pi projects was a radio frequency recording system. I needed to record an FM signal, within the VHF band. I wanted the recordings to be in the wave format, one hour files and eleven day loop with old recordings being automatically deleted. I knew I was going to…

Ah yes, a little wood working for the holidays. My beloved Mother-in-law commissioned me to make a light house for her garden as a Christmas present to her this year. After studying numerous online examples, plans, and Pinterest posts, I came up with some conclusions. I lacked the skill to make an actual scale model…

Ah yes, time to write about one of my favorite and most used projects. In amateur radio, antennas come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are just wires strung between trees, some are omni directional vertical antennas and some are beam or yagi type directional antennas. In my station, I use three different yagi…

Direct lighting strikes are one of an amateur radio operators primary fears. When I first constructed my station I simply unplugged all of my coax lines from the radios when a storm was approaching or if I knew bad weather was coming in the next few days while away for work. This last summer I…

What is the worst part of trying something different you ask? Lack of documentation. But that is what the adventure is all about, right? To learn something. Well this project was all about that. Over the last few years, there has been a massive influx of Chinese made ham radios. Marketed under different names, the…