March AI6YM Project Updates

Many thanks for the gentle reminder to finish this message. In my defense it’s three days less late than the February update. Lots of stuff happening, let’s get straight to it.

As always feel free to share this email or the link to its online equivalent.

FoxSniffer Shipping Update

FoxSniffer boards are in and being tested. Enclosures and buttons are being printed. Batteries, displays, and everything else is in stock ready to go. There’s a non-zero chance that I made some horrible mistake on these boards, so far everything looks good but I’ll know more in a day or two.

Assuming I didn’t make a horrible mistake the first batch of FoxSniffer orders will ship before the end of the month. If you ordered on my old site you’re in that batch (order numbers in the 3000s). Orders on the new site 1006 through 1029 are in the first batch too. Orders 1030 and up will be in the second batch shipping in May.

Here’s a sneak peak of a demo unit. The first batch and part of the second will ship in 3D printed enclosures. Injection molds will go to production shortly. Everyone receiving an early unit with a 3D printed enclosure can upgrade to molded plastics at no cost once they are ready.

T42 Mini Update

Filter prototypes came back from production and most of them are working as expected. Some of the lower band BPFs are a bit difficult to tune due to the larger capacitors, nothing that’s not fixable but I have some more testing to do. The front panel, main board, and amplifier designs are nearly complete. A final round of prototypes will go to production in the next couple of weeks. My April update will include photos and renderings of the radio. I’ll publish a blog post around that time too.

The most challenging part of this project has been the thermal design for the amplifier’s final stage. The new Mitsubishi RF transistors perform better at higher frequencies but the trade off is that they come in a small surface mount package. There’s just not a lot of surface area for effective cooling and what surface exists is flat on the circuit board. I’m happy to say that my latest test boards work better than expected. More on that soon.

Administrivia

The new blog site is live, although some content hasn’t been migrated yet. Please let me know your thoughts on it. Along with moving the remaining content I plan to put these email updates on the site for reference and for those who prefer not to receive emails.

That’s all for now folks.

73, AI6YM