Carport Construction p2

The basic structure of the Carport is complete; now I just need to order the roof tiles to match the house and a few days without rain to install the pine ceiling. All the exposed Oregon Pine has been painted with a non-stain wood preserver. Ethan, posing for the camera, provides a good reference of scale.

Carport Construction

I took advantage of a short break in the rain to begin construction of a carport. The roofed parking area will span 8 meters wide x 6 meters deep - ample space for two vehicles. The carport will also double as a nice shaded area over-looking our swimming pool during the hot summer months.

GLCD Assembled

The weather has been quite cold and wet recently, so I've used the extra free time indoors to work on my HF Solid State Amplifier project. The assembly of the above Graphical LCD module (Designed by VK4DD), was completed over a couple of evenings .... I now need to perform a few basic checks before inserting the PIX micro-controller and display. 

When the Amplifier is completed, this display module will provide important status information, such as power-ouput, SWR, FET-Temperature, voltages etc ... 

FT-817ND 'wideband' mod

I've suddenly got the itch to do some portable QRP work with my tiny Yaesu FT-817 HAM Radio, which I picked up in the UK a few years ago ... it has been gathering dust for quite some time. So I charged the internal battery and checked it over. It's then I realized that since I purchased it in the UK, the 2m band was restricted to just 144 - 146Mhz which is pretty much useless in Chile as ALL of the local repeaters are located in the upper 146-148Mhz. Also, the 40m band is restricted to 7 - 7.100Mhz; again in Chile I can use up to 7.200Mhz, so this has motivated me to extend its TX/RX capabilities or 'wideband' modification. The original FT-817 was very easy to extend with free software on the Internet, but I guess the FCC didn't like that so my newer ND model, requires a fiddly hardware modification.

 

Basically you have to strip off the top and bottom covers in order to expose and release the front control panel from the main chassis. Then using a fine tip soldering iron and a steady hand, modify the jumper settings as shown in the picture above. Fairly simple, in my case I needed to close the far left jumper and remove solder from the middle jumper to complete the mod. After the the radio is reassembled, it requires a hard reset holding the F and V/M buttons whilst hitting the power on button.

I checked the 2m band, it's now fully open :-)

Doors installed

Exterior almost finished

Looking at this picture it's hard to believe that the temperature was well below zero (-4C) this morning! However the sun came out so we took the opportunity to paint on the wood preserve before the next wave of rain hits. 

The front entrance is now taking shape. I shall be fitting two 50cm wide glazed pine doors, that open outwards. The spaces above the door will also be glazed to provide more light.

The cement ramp at the entrance has been broken up, as I intend to build a small deck and stairs leading up to the cabin. 

Working on cabin front entrance

Finally I have removed the ugly front doors, it now looks less like a garden shed ;-)

Most of the outer structure has now been covered with new Oregon Pine siding, and the windows have been fitted to the bathroom and bedroom.