Wayne Burdick, N6KR, has taken the gold medal at the 1st annual Kitchen Homebrew Challenge held over the weekend.
The contest challenged engineers to construct a QRP transmitter using just three transistors and whatever else they could find in their kitchens. Although the designers were allotted 12 hours to complete the task, Burdick finished in half an hour. "I used the remaining time to try and contact some stations with my transmitter and I came pretty close to Working All Continents, thanks to a fantastic and unexpected 10-meter opening!", he exclaimed. Thirty other engineers from virtually every other manufacturer of amateur radio equipment entered the contest. A contestant from a large corporation in Japan known for its fine transceivers placed second when the judges deemed his transmitter closest to actually working, although it did not put out any power and kept blowing fuses. Burdick needed only two of the 2N2222 transistors he was given to achieve an output power of 1/4 Watt. "I know 2N2222s like the back of my hand," he explained. "I felt sorry for one of the other guys, a younger engineer, who was begging the judges for a datasheet on that device. I guess he'd never used a small transistor with leads before and had no idea which were the base, emitter, and collector." "For my capacitors, I used entire boxes of aluminum foil and parchment paper, and for the inductors, I used the heating element from my toaster," he said. "Once I had the oscillator done, it was all downhill from there." "I thought of the heating coil idea, too, but I couldn't remember the formula for the inductance of a round inductor," said another contestant who wished to remain anonymous. One of the other competitors implied that Burdick had an unfair advantage. "Isn't he that QRP backpacking guy? Here I was, trying to figure out how to steal the A-to-D converter in my coffee maker. I ripped apart the refrigerator motor for the wire and I tore my undercabinet lighting out so I could use the LEDs to display an FFT of my signal, but if I had known I could just make a simple oscillator and amplifier in an empty can of creamed corn with pill bottle caps for knobs, I might have finished in 30 minutes, too." "I really made a mess of my kitchen and my wife is going to kill me," he lamented. One of the major obstacles in this competition is how to come up with a supply of power. A player from the US attempted to use the power supply in his microwave oven. "Eeesh, you shouldn't use the 1200 Volt power supply in the microwave!", warned Mr. Burdick. Mr. Burdick explained his own rationale for a source of power: "I was going to use an entire sack of potatoes and lemon juice to make a battery, but in the end I just collected batteries from my kitchen timer, cordless phone, and the emergency flashlight I keep in a drawer in case of power outages. I really had more than enough power. This was a relief since I had wanted to grill those potatoes for the Labor Day barbecue." He summed up his experience by saying, "Simpler is better." Burdick, a legend among low-power portable enthusiasts, has used homebrew equipment to make contacts while walking, swimming, and sleeping. He is co-founder of Elecraft LLC of Watsonville, CA. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
