The best power supply for FieldOps

This short article describes a flight-safe power supply for FieldOps. Component List Simply get these: USB QC/PD AFC trigger decoy board (9V) USB QC/PD AFC trigger decoy board (12V) USB QC/PD AFC trigger decoy board (15V) Xiaomi Pocket Power Bank Pro 10000 33W This one does 9V, 12V, 15V and 20V without any problems. OR A 65W USB PD power bank - not needed for 5 to 10W QRP FieldOps ...

January 6, 2026 · 1 min · 106 words · Dhiru Kholia

Supporting HOPERF CMT2300A on Linux

What This Article Covers This article presents a practical journey to add Linux support for the HOPERF CMT2300A Sub-GHz RF transceiver - starting from extracting register configuration tables out of vendor firmware, to building and testing a Linux driver on real hardware. You'll learn: How TP-Link's driver situation motivated this effort How firmware was extracted and analyzed How to build and load the custom driver on Raspberry Pi How to verify real on-air packet RX This is aimed at embedded Linux developers, reverse engineers, and RF hackers. It is not a beginner Linux kernel tutorial nor a full CMT2300A datasheet walkthrough; the focus is on practical bring-up and reproducibility. ...

December 23, 2025 · 8 min · 1497 words · Dhiru Kholia

HFDY Active Loop - LZ1AQ loop clone

The HFDY Active Loop is working extremely well, even from an indoor location in MK68. Design I am currently running the loop at 5V (via a regulated linear power supply), where it consumes slightly less than 65mA. The recommended voltage is 10V, which I plan to switch to soon. Results I am using Airspy HF+ Discovery SDR for this experiment. Future work It would be very interesting to compare this HFDY Active Loop against the PA0FRI Active Antenna. ...

November 9, 2025 · 1 min · 88 words · Dhiru Kholia

Sustainable Radio Design V2

Related articles: Proper Single Transistor LNA for HF A Sustainable Radio Design? Design We are finally going to build a QSD RX! Here is the rough schematic I am thinking about: References MC1496 Information HSDAOH on RP2350 (see internal_adc section) This way we can continue using RP2350 instead of moving to something like STM32H5 immediately PicoRX Simulations (also for DSP code)

November 7, 2025 · 1 min · 61 words · Dhiru Kholia

Writing test cases for PCBs

This note demonstrates a small connectivity tester / check nets program for KiCad. This program allows doing checks like: Is the U1:8 pin connected to GND? Motivation Sometimes visual errors can creep in the schematic (and the PCB subsequently). This connectivity tester allows expressing the same connections in a non-visual way (with a different probability of making errors). The ERC and DRC checks in KiCad work great but this non-visual test assertions provide another level of sanity checking. ...

November 7, 2025 · 11 min · 2161 words · Dhiru Kholia

Choosing a Coax for HF Field Operations

Setup: Si5351 RF generator (@ 28 MHz) ➔ GSD-Hacks-v5 digital amplifier ➔ 7th order LPF ➔ {COAX-UNDER-TEST} ➔ Digital RF power meter ➔ Dummy load Results Results at 13.8V drain: Coax Type Power Reading RG-58 (7 meters) 4.5W RG-316 (7 meters) 3.9W RG-188 (7 meters) 3.9W Results at 15V drain: Coax Type Power Reading RG-58 (7 meters) 5.4W RG-316 (7 meters) 4.7W RG-188 (7 meters) 4.7W These measurements appear to match those from Eric, WD8RIF. ...

November 5, 2025 · 1 min · 151 words · Dhiru Kholia

Easy reproducible LPF filters

Here is the schematic for a standard 50Ω LPF for the 12-11-10m bands. Designs PCB Render: Actual photo: Performance NanoVNA results of the PCB build: Build Notes These values come from RobG (https://hackaday.io/) Shunt C: 100pF Series L: 12T on T37-6 core, 11T on T50-6, making about 485nH Shunt C: 180pF Series L: 13T on T37-6 core, 12T on T50-6, making about 580nH Shunt C: 180pF Series L: 12T on T37-6 core, 11T on T50-6, making about 485nH Shunt C: 100pF Winding wire size: 27 SWG (is non-critical) Note: We needed to reduce 1T (from the values specified above) when using the T50-6 cores. As usual, use a DE-5000 LCR Meter (or better) to know the exact values. ...

November 1, 2025 · 2 min · 216 words · Dhiru Kholia

A Proper Single-Transistor LNA for HF

Note: This HF LNA design is inspired by PY2OHH designs and mcHF work. Previous article: Single Transistor LNA for HF - it cut a corner when it came to output impedance matching ;) Design The idea that a single-transistor preamp with 10 dB gain is more than enough for HF comes from Gajendra Kumar (VU2BGS). As a new "designer," I am often overwhelmed by the available design paths, so guidance from an elmer is crucial. ...

October 28, 2025 · 2 min · 236 words · Dhiru Kholia

My solar powered WSPR beacon

My solar powered WSPR beacon is now active on the 12m band! Tech Stack Tech stack: Navitas 100W Solar Panel, Exide Solar Blitz 40AH battery, Skypearll Solar Charge Controller 30A, 200W 20A DC-DC CC CV Buck module (Robu) - set to output 7.5V, Waveshare ESP32-S3 Zero board, Si5351 with 0.5ppm TCXO, GSD-Hacks-v5 amplifier, DFRobot Gravity Digital 5A Relay Module Photos of components involved (for reference): ...

October 26, 2025 · 1 min · 135 words · Dhiru Kholia

Headless WSPR Monitoring System (2025)

Setup OS and SDR Please use the latest Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on RPi 4 or later. Using a Raspberry Pi (<=3) is NOT recommended as it has quite a bit of power supply noise on the USB ports, which reduces the performance of the connected SDR. Install dependencies: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install airspyhf \ soapysdr-tools sox libsox-fmt-all wsjtx \ pulseaudio-utils git vim fluxbox xterm tightvncserver sudo apt-get install cmake pkg-config \ libusb-1.0-0-dev \ libasound2-dev \ libairspy-dev \ libairspyhf-dev \ librtlsdr-dev \ libsndfile1-dev \ portaudio19-dev \ libvolk-dev Build airspyhf-fmradion SDR software: ...

October 22, 2025 · 3 min · 454 words · Dhiru Kholia