Arduino Dinghy Speed Display

Small speed improvements may be achieved with tiny adjustments to sail trim, which can be difficult to detect unless a GPS or some form of speed display is in use. When travelling at only 4 or 5 knots a small increase can represent a considerable percentage speed gain.
Construction details and code here.

Arduino based GPS Compass

On occasions we may not require "degree" accuracy when checking our course. It may be sufficient to know the approximate direction we are travelling and that's good enough.

This little Arduino project will extract our course from a GPS NMEA stream and display our heading on an 8 point compass display.
Click here for construction details

A GPS for 5 pounds

I found a couple of these UBlox GPS modules on Ebay for just £5.
I wish I had purchased a few more.
They are so easy to use and may be configured using the UBlox U-Center software.


The picture shows a module plus a mounting PCB I quickly made.
For more pictures go here. A GPS for £5

Evermore GM-305 GPS Adapter

I picked up one of these GPS units at a local Radio Rally for a few pounds.
The unit came without its power adapter unit, just a female 9 pin D Type connection, so it was necessary to construct one.

After a few minutes probing around inside I soon found the connections.

Red wire on pin 5 = 5v DC
Black wire on pin 1 = Ground = connect to DC Ground and pin 5
White wire on pin 3 is RS232 input = connect to pin 3 TXD
Green wire on pin 4 is RS232 out = connect to pin 2 RXD

Icom IC 706 Keypad

Changing frequency on the IC 706 can be tricky when mobile due to the multiple key presses required.

John Hansen W2FS designed this great gizzmo allowing direct frequency entry with automatic mode selection depending on the frequency entered.

The EEPROM data has been slightly modified here for the European bandplan.

(Probably works with other Icom radios but not tested.)

Click here for construction details


Many thanks to John Hansen W2FS for the original design.

Nokia Dolphin TTRX Power Amplifier Modification

The Nokia TTRX Unit is a combined transmitter / Receiver unit used by the, now defunct, UK Dolphin Tetra Base Stations. Intended to operate around the 400MHz band they will operate on the 432 MHz amateur band with no adjustment to the RF stages however the bias settings are extremely high (several AMPS) and are set by microprocessor control.
These units make an excellent 200 Watt amplifier for the 70cms amateur band and are often seen at radio rallies for anything between £10 and £50.
An ebay search for "430MHz 70cm 250W RF Amplifier Transmitter" or "Nokia TTRX" or "Dolphin PA unit" sometimes produces a result.
These amplifiers have been modified to operate on the HF bands, 50 MHz and 144MHz.

See the full story here

RxControl ADS-B Receiver

Bertrands RXCONTROL receiver

My experience building the RXCONTROL receiver