815 Transmitter Postmortem

After weeks of vacation, etc I finally got back to my 815 transmitter. To recap ... the major mods since the original design shown in the ARRL handbook and my blog entry dated March 19, 2007 have been to 1) add a loading capacitor between one side of the output link and ground 2) Replace R4 with an RFC to a 200-300 VDC supply and 3) replace the 815 screen voltage dropping network R5/R6 with an RFC to a 200-300 VDC supply. The final layout is shown in my May 28 blog entry.

Tests on 40 meters have been a little disappointing. The 815 runs at only 35%-40% effeciency into a 50 ohm load. 50 watts input gives only about 20 watts out. (whoops! I checked my Drake watt meter agains a Bird. Turns out that the Drake watt meter is reading way low. The Bird says I'm putting out about 30 watts. This is about the power output I expected.) Also the transmitter is not real forgiving. If misadjusted, it goes into self oscillation or generates a trashy sounding signal.

This one will go to the back of the shelf. (but after discovering the watt meter error, only while it waits for a power supply)

Friday night, followed by Saturday

The past two days have been such a disaster I thoght it was worth blogging, so others can enjoy my suffering :)


Friday night - Nicki comes up from England

Some notable events:

• Exams went bad for a few people. Drinking ensues...
  
• Everyone pukes! Well... two people, lots of sick everywhere
  
• Persons who shall remain nameless fall asleep in the bathroom, one with her head in the toilet, the other against the toilet hugger
• "Someone" else made a booty call at 4am! AND kicked said booty call out at 5.30, har har
• I finally get to sleep at 4.30am. Rudely woken at 5.30.

Saturday morning - Work

More notable events:

• Work starts... 8.45am. I get up on time!!! In fact am 10 mins early for work
• Supervisor doesn't turn up until 9.45. Manager is ringing, we don't want to answer (we like our supervisor)
• While opening front doors the electric shutter comes down by itself, breaks, and we can't use the front door
• Arsehole customer rings, complains he didn't get some cable in his box, we tell him to come in
• Manager arrives to help fix shutters. Tells me I'm not even supposed to be in today!!!!
• Arsehole customer comes in, royally pisses off our supervisor. Supervisor gets annoyed and tells everyone to fuck off

This is all before 10am. Good start to the day

• Closing up shop, had to move random junkie from back porch
• Closing shutters, live wiring gets caught in shutter, nearly explodes
• Finally get out of work 30 mins late
• Wrote blog, contemplated falling asleep
  

Why NOT to go with Virgin Media

We've been with Virgin Media for about 10 months. We paid for (up to) 8meg ADSL with unlimited downloads. From the first day we weren't overly impressed with the speed, especially since we can see the BT exchange from our window so range isn't an issue. Nonetheless we put up with what we had.

Recently, during the day our speeds have been dropping off to next-to-nothing, which we just attributed to busy times and everyone clamoring to use the internet at once. Eventually though we heard about Virgin's "capping" of "heavy" users, and eventually got so pissed off with the speed that we phoned Virgin to confirm a few facts.

According to the girl on the phone, Virgin has implemented a new Fair Use Policy, which means that if you download more than 5GB in one week, your speed is capped to "next to nothing" (her words). I pointed out that we paid for unlimited downloads, to which she replied that I was allowed unlimited downloads, but according to the fair use policy after 5GB I had to be happy with a piss poor connection speed.

What is 5GB anyway? There are 4 people in our flat, which means 1.25GB each. If you take into account some heavy web surfing, iPlayer, youtube, etc, it's easy to hit that target after 2 days! And that's before all the music and movies off bittorrent ;)

That whole "next to nothing" thing is pretty accurate too. For example, just after I started my phone call with Virgin I tried to open the Virgin Media homepage. Approximately 20 minutes later I still had a blank screen. I mentioned this on the phone... Virgin's response? "Sorry about that, but since you're capped there's not much we can do"

I asked Virgin if we could upgrade to a heavier use package (note that we are already on "unlimited", but maybe a faster speed would have more reasonable limits). Apparently this would be no use, as all of Virgin's broadband packages are capped after 5GB. I sincerely hope this doesn't include their new Mother of All Broadband 28mb fibre optic package, since you could theoretically hit your limit after 24 minutes of downloading.

So long story short - if you live on your own and only use the internet once or twice a week, Virgin is for you. If you plan to use your internet for anything more than checking your emails, go with a good provider.

As a side note, I don't particularly blame Virgin for this kind of practise. Sure it's dishonest, sneaky, possibly illegal and a crappy way to treat your customers, but considering every man and his dog who owns an ISP is clamoring for a piece of the broadband provider pie, companies just can't afford to give you "good" broadband at the 50p/month price that people want to pay. My advice? You get what you pay for - go find a decent company that's willing to take £20 off you each month and give you an adequate service