South African Homebrew: ZS4L's "Griffin" 40 Meter SSB Transceiver

 

That's William, now ZL4L, and his homebrew 40 meter SSB transceiver.  He has given the rig a wonderful name from Greek mythology:  The Griffin (see below).  I talked to William this morning on 10 meter SSB.  I mentioned my homebrew rig and to my surprise (this doesn't happen much) he asked for more info.  Then he told me about his own homebrew creation, The Griffin.  FB William! 

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From William's QRZ.com page (https://www.qrz.com/db/ZS4L):  

I have always wanted to build a homebrew transceiver-and recently I completed my pride and joy-a 40m SSB/MCW transceiver-I call it the ZS5WC "Griffin"..

"Griffin"..-well --if you know greek mythology you will find that it defeated much greater adversaries in battle.(to cut a long story short..)
The parallel I am getting at is..Big commercial rigs can be taken on by a rig constructed at home-and with great success!.
Sure, it does not have the bells and whistles of a 1000mp-but the TX audio is good, the RX is great , and the SMILE factor-even with all the little quirks is off the scale!..
Basically it is a single conversion superhet-4 tuned BPF stages,ATT, Gain control stage ahead of 1st Rec. Mixer/Bal. mod (NE612) , Xtal 10mhz homebrew filter,2 transistor feedback amp, second gain control stage,2nd mixer/BFO (NE612)-On TX to PA board-4 transistor pre-amp, IRF510 mosfet PA, LPF and RX /TX relay. ON RX to TL072 audio pre-amp, Spits to AGC/S-meter amp-(741 and BC107's) and audio amp TBA820m.
ALC is done on AGC board as well with BC107 back to back to AGC bc107.
The S-meter drive is developed in the emitter leg of the AGC BC107-simple series pot to calibrate-no zero pot is required..(Works great!)
There is a volt control PCB too, with RX/TX switching.
On the main PCB there is a phase shift osc. for MCW and sidetone. Alc is adjustable from front panel from 1/2 watt to 5 watt.Rit is included in the Hartley osc. circuit and readout is done with a pic and two line LCD disp.(from AADE.com..)
Freq. drift from warm is 200Hz down in frequency then swings round and stabilises close to start freq.
Rit is good for around 5Khz swing.
Amp keying is available on the back panel, as well as an aux. 12 supply-(To run a homebrew noise squasher and amp..)

https://www.qrz.com/db/ZS4L