News

Greetings, colleagues!
Vasily R6NY (ex. RN6LHF) is here.

I have not been in touch for a long time, there were reasons for that.
As you know, our company has found its permanent home. After 15 years of work, we finally moved to our own building. Before that we had changed three locations and worked at the last one for about 8 years.
A Russian proverb says when you are at home, you know better how to overcome any difficulties. In our own building we are free to do whatever we want, or so I thought… I will open the veil a little and tell you how it was. Back in September last year, we bought a building where the first two floors were in good shape and ready to embrace us. There was one “but”, the building lacked a heating system, electricity, sewerage, plumbing, and other communal facilities. After all, the building was part of a large Soviet factory with centralized heat supply. To top it all off, the roof was leaking and there was a “jungle” growing on the property, behind which you couldn't see the first floor. From the outside, it could seem that the building had three floors :)
You never know what you can do till you try, Vasily had to master the skills of a construction foreman and for half a year revitalize the building for moving. No sooner said than done, at the end of April 2024 we started moving into a four-story building and at once occupied two floors of 500 square meters each, although previously the whole company occupied an area of about 600 meters.
Our radio-electronic equipment (REE) production department grew into a full-fledged REE production facility and occupied the entire first floor. Of course, there are technical offices on the floor, such as a switchboard room, sanitary facilities, and a passageway, but still, the electronics production has acquired its own space and began to realize its full potential. Following the REE production, developers and administrative staff moved to the second floor. Everyone knows that three moves are the same as a fire! Realizing this proverb, we had patience and began to frantically, but at the same time confidently, progressively master the new premises. We completely revised the principle of production organization and now we were able to implement the principle of linear construction of sites, when at the beginning of the process is a warehouse with radio parts. Then the production manager sets the production plan and starts the process of assembling a batch of transceivers. Parts from the warehouse move to the SMD assembly area, then DIP assembly, followed by the QA area, then the assembly area and packaging. In this way we managed to eliminate unnecessary walking between the sections, everything turned out organically. It is easier to work at the new place, because it is facilitated by the system of supply and exhaust ventilation of the whole building!
Developers of REE and programmers got their own large space where they continued their work. We managed to allocate a separate space for a large flow of students, with whom our leading programmers and engineers work. Now we rely on young people and actively participate in their educational life.
Around the end of June, I exhaled a little: “Phew, well, we've kind of moved, things are getting better!”. Since the beginning of July, we began shipments of new transceivers, which made me and our radio amateur customers very happy. Also, the repairs of transceivers got back on track. Please understand this moment, now we are working in normal mode and shipments of new transceivers are now on schedule, repairs are actively catching up.

or full-fledged production of radios and SMT-machines, we have quite decently grown the CNC and metal processing, forming a true factory with modern milling and turning centers, manual and other machines, which also earlier operated on rented space. We had already come to the point where we had exhausted all the authorized electricity in the main building. In the end, we decided to build a rapidly erecting shop next to the main building. In April there was a vacant lot with “palm trees” in its place, and at the beginning of July the roof was already being put on. At the current moment, the wiring of electricity and air for the machines is being done. A little later I will make a report and show the finished version.

The apogee of any amateur station development, especially transceiver production, is the presence of antennas on the roof of the building! Last Friday under the warm southern sun (+38 С in the shade) we’ve erected an aluminum mast of square cross-section 17 meters high on the roof of our building. On top of the mast there is a basket for safe installation work — not just a mast, but a fairy tale :), which I accidentally found in the form of scraps at a metal-receiving point…
We are now in the process of revision of all the antennas removed and will be at full strength this week. My power amplifier with the MB1 transceiver has been ready for a while now. The programmers are waiting for a live broadcast to test the CW skimmer and other software features. During this time, we’ve got new radio amateurs in our company who want to work on the air, of course, after hours :)
About next week, taking into account the commissioning of antennas and our machine production group, we can say that the move is over! With what, I congratulate all of us!
73! Vasily, R6NY ex.RN6LHF

P.S. For about a month the head programmer has been working on the ExpertSDR3 software. Current goal is the revamp of the control module, which is the junction between the program shell and the signal processing kernel, it also includes TCI control, it supports all types of our devices, including the remote-control mode. We can say that this is the first step before the updated ERS. While the transceiver firmware is in development, the programmer is completely rewriting the ERS into C++ language, current ERS is written using Go. Now “remote control” will be handled by a group of programmers who develop ExpertSDR3 and all the surrounding infrastructure (utilities, skimmers, etc.). Previously, this was handled by a programmer who completely left this area for our PiPlacer machines, which greatly complicated the development of ERS, we are fixing this now. As soon as more news on this topic becomes available, we will inform you.