May 2024 (Ongoing)
This project is now Open-Sourced, so you can buy all parts and build the project for yourself. The minimum PCB order quantity is 5 from JLCPCB, and parts from other suppliers like AliExpress are often in quantities of 10.
I will make many parts available here in quantities of one or more as a limited kits for each board.
Parts and notes
- PCBs. Individual or a set of 6 PCBs (Radio PCB, CPU PCB, Keypad PCB, Band Pass Filter PCB, PA PCB, Front panel PCB.
- Short Kits. This will include some of the more obscure parts such as:
- 10mm Transformer cores. (The now obsolete TOKO type 10k series). These are for the Bandpass Filters, Noise Blanker amplifier on the Radio board. These coils have been specially wound and manufactured for this project to get the highest performance. Other cores are ok such as the TOKO 10mm cores, and work perfectly well. You can buy these elsewhere and experiment also.
- Some Ferrite cores such as the HP37-43, they are smaller than the standard FT37-43 but a lot smaller and cheaper.
- Crystal SSB Filters.
- 8MHz XTALS will be sold as matched sets for the Pre-Filter (2 crystals), SSB filter (6 crystals) and optional CW filter (5 crystals). 8MHz is the IF frequency of choice for me.
- If you like experimenting you can buy say a batch of 50 or 100 and match your own. Any frequency between 7.5 and 11 MHz should work, but redesign of the Diplexer on the Radio board would be needed.
- Case. These are very expensive in New Zealand. They could be for sale, but the plans will also be made available on GitHub so you can get them made yourself locally. The case parts can be manufactured by water or laser cutting, or if you are really into metalwork, made at home by hand. Or design your own case and share it with the project or sell it on yourself…
- AliExpress. I have used ALiExpress mainly as they are cheap and easy to use here in New Zealand, with very few issues.
- *** A special note *** The RD70HVF1 Finals. I strongly suggest if you are buying them from AliExpress that you use AIICKING Store. They provided good parts. The issue I have with this part is that there are suppliers that sell them with no Mitsubishi stamp on them. These may or may not work, a bit of a gamble. These parts also have short / cropped lead-out tabs. My guess (And it is a guess, but having worked in the industry for decades this does happen) is that when Mitsubishi do a production run, they have various test quality results on parts. The best quality are stamped RD70HVF1, have longer leads and sold. The next best quality I suspect don’t reach the 520mHz result, and are stamped and sold as RF100HHF1, which perform well at 100W at lower frequencies… These will probably work in the HamPi well, but have not been tested. The RD70HVF1 will easily do this anyway. The next lower quality parts could then have had their leads clipped, and rather than thrown away sold on to the ‘market’ place by other suppliers, stamped and sold as the real thing with no Mitsubishi stamp. Anyway, have a look around at the specification, especially the feedback on the store selling them, and the photos you will see what I mean. Insist on Original Parts and Only with a Mitsubishi stamp. Testing is covered elsewhere.
Note: AliExpress links below can become out of date and not work as sellers stop selling parts. I will attempt to keep links current. If you need assistance please email me.
CPU & Keypad & Front Panel
Radio Board
BandPass Filter Board
PA Board
Case and Hardware BOM Costs
The case plans will be put on these web pages soon (i.e. no charge). I had 3 cases made here in New Zealand and they cost NZD550 for 3. They have been designed to be flat-pack so easy for postage. The idea is that the constructor can get them make locally in your own country, either as an individual or a group, or if you want to have them manufactures and supply them please contact me and discuss. If your mechanical design skills are better than mine and you want to design a more sexy case, there could be a possibility here…
