My plan is to develop an HF radio transceiver for my own personal use. After looking at the products on the market, and learning a lot about radio in general, I decided that I want to try my hand at building my own rig.

The feature set I’m looking to include is growing, but I think within my skills. These include:

• Digital tuning
• Digital controls
• Modular design for easy component upgrades
• Compact form
• Computer control
• Remote access to tuner via internet
• Ability to transmit and receive in all HF ham bands (+2 metre, if possible)

A good portion of the homebrew rigs I see on the internet are built using all analog components and controls. This works quite well, but it conflicts with one of my design goals – remote access. In order to be able to access the controls via computer, I will need to have digital controls for every element.

As this is a modular design, I am looking to build each component individually. As my understanding, skill, and budget improve, I can change components down the road.

And finally, the name. After some thought, I decided that naming the radio “Super Awesome Ham Radio Deluxe” was both too wordy and not very original. I’ve instead settled on the much more generic ‘RM-1′, ‘RM’ for the last two letters of my callsign, and ‘1′ being more aspirational. I hope that there will be an ‘RM-2′ in the future.

Greetings.

This is a fork from my main website, ndmckinney.net.  I considered having these posts as part of my main website, but since one of my goals, outlined in this page, was to establish a more complete information repository for other homebrewing ham radio operators, I thought it would be simpler to have a separate site.

More to come…