G0UPL

Episode 125 - Hans Summers - G0UPL

As a 2009 QRP ARCI Hall of Fame inductee - Hans Summers, G0UPL,  is an electronic experimenter and amateur radio innovator extraordinaire.  Hans pays careful attention to compact and minimal parts count to achieve the design goals of his homebrew projects. Hans is the owner of QRP Labs joins Eric, 4Z1UG, in a conversation about QRSS slow data transmissions, high altitude balloon transmitters, and shares his ham radio and electronic builder story.

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Show Notes

Listen to Podcast

 Hans Summers' Links:

• http://www.hanssummers.com - Hans' lab notebook on all of his projects
• QRP Labs - Hans' kit business with web store

Early beginnigs:

• Started electronics Age 6
• Father was a home brewer in tube/valve receivers
• Grandfather was electrician on the British Railways

Education: Imperial College, London,  Physics Degree

Imperial College Amateur Radio Club

RSGB - Radio Society of Great Britain

SPRAT - Official magazine of the G-QRP group

​First License: March 1994, Age 23, G0UPL

Hans' Z-80 computer Project

Hans' Nixie Tube project - uses 10 neon digits inside a glass tube

First Rig: All home brew -

• One valve ECL82 triode-pentode transmitter on 80 meters
• Receiver: Tayloe Mixer - now the popular front end of all SDR, followed by a Polyphase network
• Frequency Counter
• Antenna tuning unit

Pat Hawker, G3VA (SK) - monthly article in Radcom “Technical Topics”.  All 50 years of his Technical Topic articles are avalilable from Amazon. 

Current Rig:
QRP Labs WSPR - QRSS/WSPR mode, 6 band transmitter kit.

Career:  software design for financial institutions

G-QRP Club - founded by George Dobbs

Favorite construction methods:

• Matrix boards (perf board), no copper tracks on one side.  
• For RF projects: dead or ugly bug construction on single or double sided copper circuit board
• Decoupling capacitor for tie point
• Hans' never does a PCB project for a one off project

Hans' test equipment:

• Digital Volt-Ohm meter
• Frequency counter - Racal 9911, Heathkit Frequency Counter with Nixie tube readout
• Analog oscilloscope with digital frequency readout
• Spectrum analyzer Advantest 3361 with tracking generator
• Digital storage oscilloscope, Owon 3102A
• Signal Generator/VFO

SA-602, NE602 Mixer Chip - designed as a 2nd IF mixer for early cellphones

Hans' spectrum analyzer project  

QRSS - very very slow CW transmissions that takes advantage of a low SNR to copy CW messages with very low power. Often used for propagation beacons.  Modes derived from QRSS is FSKCW and JT65 from

Joe Taylor, K1JT - creator of JT65 and WSPRnet

CW signal to noise ratio

QRSS Software: Argo , Spectrum Lab

WSPRnet

Hans' QRSS Rigs use a microprocessor to do the message encoding.  

AVR Microprocessor Chip

OCXO -  temperature controlled crystal oscillator - only kit built OCXO in the World.

AT cut crystal

Ashhar Farhan VU2ESE - creator of the BitX transceiver

Bitx20 Yahoo Group

Most exciting - huge availability of components and information

VE3KCL balloon launches using WSPR - the tracking logs for 16 balloon flights are on this website behind the QRP Labs website.

Advice to new or returning hams: Build something

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Hans' Z-80 Computer

Nixie Tube Clock

QRP Labs U3S 6 Band WSPR/QRSS
​Transmitter Kit

G0UPL High Altitude Balloon
​WSPR Transmitter with GPS