Been cold in beautiful central IL. I just looked and we're having a heat wave - 13 F! We still have snow on the ground. Sure has been a weird winter. I don't remember this much snow since I was a kid. We have a lake in Decatur and as a kid I remember people used to drive on it in the winter. Recent years that wouldn't work so well.

Has anyone heard about Farhan's new transceiver design? (Farhan developed the marvelous BITX transceiver)

It's called the Minima - http://www.phonestack.com/farhan/minima.html

It uses an Arduino for some general functions, and to drive an Si570. He uses the KISS mixer and drives it straight from the bandpass filters with no RF amp. CW/SSB and all HF. Real unusual tuning control. Instead of a encoder he uses a 100K pot. From the 'center' you tun the pot left to go down in frequency and right to go up in frequency but like a jog/shuttle knob on a VCR the further you turn from center the faster the frequency moves. A little unusual but should work. 

As-is the XCVR puts out 1 watt but Farhan also has a nice amp called the JBOT (just a bunch of transistors) that can up it a bit. 

All open source like. 

After I get my G-59 going I plan to try to build one. Only expensive part is the Si570. I see Si no longer allows you samples! :-)

73

Dan - KB9JLO

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