Tag: DIY

Serhii PSB built a very very nice Holder for the Malahit DSP1 / Malahit DSP2. You can find his Youtube channel here: Serhii Youtube channel

Features

• Two versions for Malahit DSP1 and Malahit DSP2 (only original)
• 2 mm stainless steel
• addditional surface treatment
• cutouts at the rear for increased speaker clarity
• protective pads so that the Malahit DSP1 / DSP2 does not slip or vibrate
• It’s possible to get a custom text engraved as standard. The names of the Malahit developers are engraved as standard

How you can buy it from him:

• E mail to Serhii PSB ukrsp154@gmail.com or Telegram to “PSB Serg” in english or russian (Please note that he answer in russian, but it´s now problem to translate it with DeepL)
• Tell him Malahit DSP1 or Malahit DSP2
• The price with shipping is in the moment about 35 € because it´s a small batch
• You can sent the momey with Wester Union or SWIFT bank transfer (He sent it from Ukrain, there is no Paypal)
• Sent him your full address with country and your mobile phone number

Payment with Western Union (very easy):

You can register a new account for Western Union and it´s very easy and takes only 1 minute. You can sent the money from your bank account or with many other options, to Western Union.

• There are three options to sent money with Western Union, use the option cash
• You need only his full name and his telephone number and the coutry Ukraine
• I had to pay a charging fee from 1,90 € for Western Union
• After that, sent him the transaction number, than he can go to Western Union an get the money

Paypment with SWIFT bank transfer

A SWIFT bank transfer is more difficult, because you need much of data:

• Go to your online banking and click on foreign bank transfer
• You get two IBAN numbers from Serhii: One for $ and one for €, please use the correct one
• Serhii tells you the data which you need like:
  • Serhii: Name, full address
  • Serhii bank: Name, full address, SWIFT code
  • Maybe: Intermediary bank: Name, full address, SWIFT code

I sent him a little bit more money with Western Union, because it is a very nice project and i want to support projects like this.

Here can you see the difference between the Malahit DSP1 and Malahit DSP2 stands:

In China you can get a kit for an antenna tuner for about 10 €, which I once assembled for fun. Here is the link to buy it: Manuel Antenna Tuner DIY Kit 1-3 0 MHz

The build was a little tricky because there wasn’t much room in the case. In addition to the parts included in the kit, I added two banana sockets. This is what my finished kit looks like.

Matching the antennas actually works quite well: tested from 160m to 12m.

ADS-B for receiving the flight data is on 1090 MHz. So a quarter wavelength is about 6.8 cm. However, I cut my copper wires a little longer so that I can still tune afterwards.

What do you need:

• A socket,perhaps a PL, BNC or SMA
• Rigid copper wire, 5 x 8 cm (I stripped mine from a 3 core power cable).
• optional are cable lugs and screws (instead you can solder the copper wires directly to the socket)

I have decided for the SMA socket, because I want to go later anyway on SMA. Otherwise, I have found four different screws and nuts, in the same diameter.

• Next, I attached the cable lugs to the SMA socket with the screws. Alternatively, you can solder the copper wires directly to the socket.
• Then I stripped 5 chum wires from a power cable and shortened them to 8 cm.

• Then I wetted all the copper wires with tin.

• Next, I soldered four copper wires to the lugs.
• After that I soldered the fifth copper wire to the inner conductor of the SMA socket.

• Finally, I connected the antenna to an analyzer and found that the copper wires were too long.
• I shortened all copper wires to 6.7 cm and had a SWR of 1:21 on 1090 MHz. I measured including the cable lugs.

• The antenna is located in the middle of Berlin on the balcony on the second floor and has a range of about 280 km.

I’ll skip the first steps, because I had already described them in the instructions for the BNC socket. You can read that here: http://mini-whip.de/2021/04/08/mla-30-plus-bnc-buchse/

• I stripped the cable a few cm, almost as long as the SMA socket is.
• Now I have bent the outer conductor backwards.
• Then I soldered the inner conductor.

• Since I decided to use the crimp variant of the SMA socket, I now have to pull the heat shrink tubing and crimp sleeve onto the cable

• Now the inner conductor can be inserted.
• Next, the outer conductor must be bent forward again and the crimp sleeve put on.

• Now the connector can be crimped.

• The whole thing should then look like this.

• Finally, I pulled a heat shrink tube over the connection.

• It should then look like this.

• Finally I glued the bushing and the screws for the loop with epoxy.
• Before that, I roughened the areas with a file so that the epoxy would sit better.

• The last thing to do is to fold the cable and close the lid.
• I left the cable extra longer in case I still want to make adjustments.

Since the cable on the MLA 30 Plus is fixed, quite thin and 5m long, I decided to install a BNC socket. I had these two BNC sockets in stock. I would have liked the larger with the rubber verbau, but the diameter seemed too thick, so I have the left variant use.

• When you open the lid, you will see the cable, which is attached to the housing with hot glue.

• The cable can be pulled 20 cm inwards with a little force and then the cable can be clipped off and the adhesive carefully removed.
• Now the hole can be drilled out. I did this with a hand drill, because otherwise you can hit the coil in the middle very quickly. I have seen some videos where the coil was striped with the drill.
• In my case, the diameter of the smaller BNC socket was 9 mm.

• Then the rubber must be removed a few cm. After that I bent the screen backwards.

• Twist the shield together and tin it.
• Tin inner conductor.
• Install the BNC socket. Depending on how much black epoxy was poured, it may be very tight with the nut. It may be necessary to scrape or file the black epoxy down to the board.
• Solder the sheath and inner conductor to the socket. I left the cable longer on purpose in case I want to make adjustments in the future.
• If you still have a ferrite core / folding ferrite, you can still attach it to the coax cable in the housing.

• It might make sense to adjust the blue potentiometer in the upper left corner. With the included wire loop, you can definitely raise the sensitivity a bit. In my case, I had to turn it counterclockwise.
• If you use a longer or thicker loop, you should reduce the sensitivity, otherwise too much interference will be amplified.