Month: February 2022

Receive BPF

Having added the trimmer caps to the BPF I still had issues, the filter was off band and I couldn’t quite work out why, I fiddled a bit, replaced one of the variable caps which wasn’t measuring correctly, and then decided to model the filter in LTSpice to reproduce my VNA findings.

First of all I reproduced the schematic (with a 50 Ohm load). C3 and C6 represent the variable capacitors, adjusting them to 35pF brings the filter on band.

Filter as designed, C3 and C6 are the variable capacitors

I managed to reproduce my problem by changing the 150pF capacitors (C2 and C5 below) to about 190pF, however I was fairly confident in those components, so I played with the inductor values and managed to reproduce my VNA findings almost exactly by adjusting the values from 0.4µ to 0.5µ.

A closer examination of my filter and it became clear that the issue was the windings on the inductors which were too closely placed, once I spaced them out further I was able to get the filter on band.

Start On The VFO/BFO

After a period of procrastination I’ve been forced to take a short pause on the IF board whilst waiting for some enamelled copper wire of the right SWG to arrive for the toroids, so thought I’d make a start on the VFO/BFO module.

When I originally prepared the board I didn’t test the breaks in the traces for continuity, so before placing the components I checked them and there were a number of breaks which had continuity. After sorting the continuity I placed the power regulator first (and tested it), I then started to place the rest of the components.

I’m not all that happy with some of the soldering on this but I think its good enough and shouldn’t need redoing.