EDIT 5/13/26 – I have 5 kits available, email me at kv6o@kv6o.com if you want one.

Looks like my last post was May 10, 2025, and today is May 10, 2026 – so at least I am consistent! I get a trickle of requests these days looking for kits, I just put together another 5 and need to order headers to make the kit complete, so I’ll hopefully have some to ship in a week or two. A few folks have posted asking, so I’ll send you an e-mail when I get the kits complete.

This PCB was designed in Eagle years ago, and I have been recently working in KiCAD on another project with Surface Mount Devices (SMD’s) and decide to import the DG5 project and see what I could do converting it to SMDs – mostly as an exercise. Doing some preliminary research, a Raspberry Pi RP2040 (32-bit dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller) might be able to process all 3 frequencies simultaneously – and at 40MHz plus, where the HET frequency is. This would eliminate the 74HC93 used as a divide by 8 pre-scaler for the HET, and the 74HC153 used to select between the VFO, CAR, and HET signals for measurement into the single frequency county on the ATMega328. IF I were do design this today, more modern microcontrollers would be the way to go here, but given the demand has tapered off, I don’t think I’ll go thru a full on redesign and rewrite of the code for 5-10 units a year. Besides, the current design works – even if it’s getting a little old. Heck, the TS-520’s are way older!

Thoughts? Anyone want to tackle this?