Ham Radio -- How To Build Stable Oscillators

Spasibo Vasily!  

Wow, thanks a lot Todd.   There is some great wisdom in your video.  You clearly demonstrate that it is possible to build your own stable LC VFOs.  Sure, for many the arrival of the synthesizer chip put an end to this kind of project.  But some of us still want to fully homebrew all the stages in our rigs, and not be dependent on mysterious chips and software written by others.  

I really liked the way Todd acknowedged the tremendous contributions of Wes, and Roy, and Rick and others. 

Of course, all of Todd's recommendations are right on the mark.  I have been following most of them (but I do fall short and occassionally use a Manhattan pad or two).  Todd even gets into the mysterious and arcane practice of boiling (three times!) toroidal transformers.  I do have a preference for air-core coils, but that boiling sounds like fun. 

One thing that Todd and Brad might also want to consider:   tuning linearity.  Too often LC VFOs end up having the frequency spacing very close at one end of the dial and very broad at the other end.  "Bob's Electron Bunker" provides some great tools for alleviating this problem:

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-cure-for-frequency-bunching-up-in.html

Thanks again Todd! 

Rick Campbell KK7B at FDIM: Interview #5 by Bob Crane W8SX

/KH6

Having recently been involved in an effort to teach students about radio electronics, I found Rick's comments especially interesting.  

At FDIM,  he and his daughter were presenting a hidden transmitter hunt using rigs and Yagis at 432 MHz.  This was in part the result of his students having wanted to do something new with ham radio.  It was very impressive that the students had done this all with gear that they had built themselves.  Rick also made sure that they all learned how to solder.   

Rick ended the interview with a nice shout-out to SolderSmoke. 

Here is the interview: 

http://soldersmoke.com/KK7B23.mp3

And here is a paper Rick did on VHF.  It is a bit old, but it is good.  

 http://www.pnwvhfs.org/conference/2009/Introduction-to-VHF-Experiments.pdf

 Thanks Rick!  Thanks Bob! 

Wisdom from AA0ZZ: NO LIBRARIES! ASSEMBLER CODE ONLY! -- "Digital Crap" -- "No Magic Fruit" What qualifies as a real rig? Si570 vs. Si5351

 

Bill,

Why do you guys make your Soldersmoke podcasts so darn intriguing such that I can’t listen to them in the background while I’m doing something else?   Good grief!  I start listening and before long you make me stop and chase down a rabbit hole to find something new that you mentioned that I had no clue was out there.    Before long I’m doodling out a new sketch or playing with at a new design for something I really need to experiment with or build “next” or something I need to  try.   It is taking too much of my time!!  J

 I’ve been listening to your podcasts for years.   Way back, before I knew you and before I knew you were doing these Soldersmoke blogs with Mike, KL7R, and just before he was so tragically killed, I was collaborating with him on a simple frequency counter project using a PIC microcontroller.  We were making good progress on a neat design.  I later completed the project but always kept his contributions noted as part of the source code. 

 I’ve been making PIC-based VFOs for years – dating back to about 2000 – aiming them at builders who were looking for something to go along with Rick Campbell’s (KK7B) receivers.  Rick is a good friend now, after we met in the Kanga booth at Dayton where we both were demonstrating our stuff.  (Bill Kelsey (N8ET) of Kanga, was the “marketer” for my kits as well as Rick’s for many years.)   My original VFO kits used a DDS (high-end AD9854) that simultaneously  produced I and Q signals which made it perfect for Rick’s phasing gear.  Rick is a big supporter of my work but he still kids me about polluting his beautiful analog world with my “digital crap” (copyright KK7B term).   When I came out with a newer version VFO using a Silicon Labs Si570 PPLL  (I can hear already Pete Juliano groaning) it was a big improvement over the AD9854 in noise/spur reduction.  I documented this all in a QEX article in about 2011 and Rick (and Wes Hayward) were very supportive/appreciative of my work.   

 I have used the Si5351 also and I understand Pete’s point of view.  It’s “plenty good” for most amateur projects.  However, it remains a fact that the Si570 is a better part and produces a cleaner signal.  That’s the reason why the Elecraft KX3 uses a Si570.   Granted, the newer Elecraft KX2 uses a Si5351 but it’s most likely because they wanted to preserve battery life (the Si570 uses more power but not nearly as much as the AD9854) and also to reduce the cost.   I do understand!   I also fully understand the ability of the Si5351 to produce I and Q signals via different channels.  I’ve had extensive conversations about this with Hans Summers, at Dayton and online.  I use a pair of Flip-Flops on the output of the Si570 instead.  My PIC code driving the Si570 is ALL written in ASSEMBLER code.  Yep!   I’m an EE but have had a career mainly in software development and much of it was writing assembler code.   I dare say there aren’t too many gluttons for punishment that do it this way.  I do it because I want to understand every line of code don’t want to be dependent on anyone else’s libraries.  Every line of code in my VFO’s and Signal Generators is MINE so I know I can debug it and it can’t get changed out from under me.   (This problem bit Ashar Farhan hard on the Raduino of his BitX.   Tuning clicks appeared because the Si5351 libraries he used changed between the time he tested it and released it.   I was really appalled when I dug into this and resolved to NEVER use libraries that I didn’t write myself.  Similarly, this also makes me have some distaste for Arduino sketches.  I would rather see ALL of the code including the initialization code, the serial routines, etc, rather than having them hidden and get pulled in from Arduino libraries.  That’s similar to the reason why Hans Summers didn’t use an Arduino in his QCX.  He used the same Atmel microprocessor but developed/debugged it as “C” code with the full Atmel IDE/debugger.                                                                                                            

By the way, Pete  mentioned the Phaser FT8 transceiver by Dave, K1SWL, in a recent podcast.  Dave is a very close friend, even though I haven’t met him in person since about 2000.  We Email at least daily and some of it is even about radio. J   I did the PIC code for the tiny PIC that controls the Si5351 in the Phaser.   Yes, it’s written entirely in Assembler again!   I do know how to do it for a Si5351.  That Si5351 code is not nearly as much “fun”, though.  I know, this will make very little difference to guys who write Arduino “C” code to control it but under the covers it’s a world of difference.   It takes me about 15 serial, sequential, math operations to generate the parameters for the Si5351.  None of them can be table driven and they all have to be performed sequentially.   (This is all hidden in about 5 lines of complex, Arduino “C” code but the operations are all there in the compiled assembler code.)   In contrast, my Si570 code is almost all table driven.   I just have to do one large (48-bit) division operation at the end to generate the parameters.    Yes, that’s a bit of trickery to do in ASM.   There are no libraries do this.

 I will point out one more advantage of the Si570 in comparison to the Si5351.  It has the ability to self-calibrate via software instead of relying on an external frequency standard.  In my Si570 app I can read up the exact parameters for the crystal embedded inside the Si570, run my frequency-generating algorithm “backwards” and determine the exact crystal frequency (within tolerances, of course) for that particular Si570.  Then I update all the internal tables using that crystal frequency and from then on all generated frequencies are “exact”.   I love this!  Frequency often moves by about 6 kHz on 40M.

 Oh yes, I must mention the difference of home solderability of the si570 vs the Si5351.  Those little Si5351 buggers are terribly difficult to solder at home while the Si570 is a breeze.   I know, many folks will just buy the AdaFruit Si5351 board and it’s already soldered on but, again, I like to do it all myself.   No “magic Fruit” for me.

 Now that I retired a couple of years ago and am getting out of the VFO kitting business I can finally build complete rigs instead of just making the next-generation VFO’s for everyone else to use.   I recently build a tiny, Direct Conversion rig with a Si570 signal generator (of course) and a diode ring mixer (ADE-1).  Look at my web page,  www.aa0zz.com  to see it, along with my VFO projects that I’ve been building in the past.   As you well know, Direct Conversion is fun to build and the sound is astounding; however, they are rather a pain to use!  Yes, I did make it qualify as a real rig by making several contacts all over the country.  (Wes Hayward gave me the criteria:  he told me that I must put any new rig on the air and make at least one contact before it qualifies as a real rig.)  

 The new rig that’s on my workbench is my own version of a phasing rig, experimenting with a Quadrature Sampling Detector (QSD, sometimes called a “Tayloe” mixer), using some ideas from Rick’s R2 and R2Pro receivers and many innovations of my own.  At present my new higher-end Signal Generator works great, the QSD receiver works great (extremely quiet and MDS of -130 dB on 40 meters) and the transmitter is putting out about 16 watts with two RD16HHF1’s in push-pull.  You can take away my “QRP-Only-Forever” badge too, not that I’ve ever subscribed to that concept!  Still more tweaking to do with the TX but now I’m also working on the “glue” circuitry and the T/R switch.   The SigGen, RX and TX are all on separate boards that plug into a base board which has the interconnections between boards and the jacks on the back.  I’ve built DOZENS of variations of each of these boards. Fortunately they all fall within the size limit criteria to get them from China at the incredible price of $5 for 10 boards (plus $18 shipping) with about 1 week turnaround.   Cost isn’t really an object at this point but it’s more of getting a hardware education that I sadly missed while I concentrated on software for so many years.  it’s certainly nice to have willing mentors such as Rick, Wes, Dave (K1SWL), Don (W6JL) and many others to bounce my crazy ideas off.  Yes, I’m having a ball!  

 I was licensed in 1964 but out of radio completely from 1975 to 1995.   Do you like the picture of my DX-100 on my web page?  My buddy in the 60’s had a Drake 2B and I drooled over it but couldn’t afford one.

Now I must finish this rig before you guys send me down another rabbit hole.   Too many fascinating things to think about!   I literally have a “priority list” on the my computer’s desktop screen.  Every time I come up with a new project idea – something I really want to play with such as a Raspberry Pi, SDR, etc, I pull out the priority list and decide where it fits and what I want to slide down to accommodate it.  That’s my reality check!

 Take care, Bill.   Thanks for taking the time to give us many inspiring thoughts and ideas.

 73,

-Craig, AA0ZZ

Mixer Insights using Propellers and Cameras -- From Walla Walla University. And SDR Design Info.

 

Pete Eaton sent us this video from the 2020 ARRL/TAPR Communications Conference.   I have the portion of interest cued up (above).  (The portion of interest begins at 6:59:46.)

There is a lot of really cool SDR design info in this video and in the associated paper  (the TAPR site says you have to pay the ARRL $9 for the paper, but in the comments someone says the papers will be available free after the conference).  

What caught my attention was the students' discussion of mixer action.   They use an analogy with a spinning propeller (the incoming RF) and a camera (triggered by the local oscillator) that samples the incoming signal at a specific rate. This is analogous to a Quadrature Sampling Detector. 

The really interesting part for me was how this analogy allows us to see how phase differences between the desired signal and the image signal arise.   These phase differences permit an SDR receiver (or indeed an old fashioned phasing Direct Conversion receiver) to reject the image while allowing the desired signal to pass.  

This is a key point in understanding mixers, and is really quite amazing. Before I saw this video, I had just come to accept (without understanding WHY) that the desired signal and the image signal would have phase differences, EVEN IF THEY WERE COMING OUT OF THE MIXER AT THE SAME FREQUENCY.  It is this phase difference that allows us to knock one down while allowing the other to pass. The propellers and cameras of Walla Walla University gave me insight as to how and why these phase differences exist.  

In their paper, the Walla Wall group mention uSDX, the project that is currently generating so much excitement around the world: 

Low-cost is not the only reason SDRs have become more popular among the amateur radio

community. More recently, Guido Ten Dolle’s μSDX open source transceiver has generated

increasing interest in quadrature sampling down-conversion SDRs in the homebrew QRP

community. Guido, PE1NNZ, was able to modify the QCX, QRP transceiver for SSB operation

with an efficient class-E amplifier, using only an ATMEGA328 and Arduino code to run the QSD

SDR. This groundbreaking work in this type of SDR has inspired various renditions of Guido’s

radio, fostering a lively groups.io group that can be followed at https://groups.io/g/ucx.

Kudos to Caleb Froelich, Dr. Rob Frohne KL7NA,  Konrad McClure, Joshua Silver, and 

Jordyn Watkins KN6FFS,  all of Walla Walla University,  for some really impressive work.  (BTW:  Rob tells me that back in the mid-90s he too built one of Rick Campbell's phasing receivers and wrote a QST article about it  (probably the first SDR article published by QST).  Details on the project are here: http://fweb.wallawalla.edu/~frohro/R2_DSP/R2-DSP.html

Presence (Absence?) and Direct Conversion Receivers (with wise comments from Farhan)

Hello Bill,

    I was reading an online article by Wes Hayward, W7ZO  from 1968  about the history of direct conversion receivers (http://w7zoi.net/dcrx68a.pdf)  .  It was linked in an email in qrptech.    It recounts how he had first build a dc receiver with a single diode for the detector, and how microphonic it was, and dissatisfying an experience.   This was in the early days of solid state devices, and so they were hard to come by.   He describes meeting another ham engineer at work Dick Bingham, W7WKR who immediately recognized that what he needed was a diode ring mixer.    The story goes on to describe their experiments, and success at this design.   

  They decided to write up the design for QST.   I won't bore you with the details...the article is well worth reading about how Wes mailed the radio and the design to ARRL, and how it ended up in the hands of a new person on their staff there, Doug DeMaw, W1CER (later W1FB.).  Here is an excerpt from the article describing Doug's reaction to the receiver:

"This was the epiphany, the moment when Doug realized that solid-state technology had produce a new way to build a simple receiver. Doug tuned the receiver higher in the band and found some SSB. Again it was like nothing he had ever heard. It was as if the voice came from the same room. Doug used the term presence in his description."

Here I present the earliest use, that I know of, of presence being used to describe a receiver.    I have to say when I read it, I immediately thought of you guys, and decided to share.

Thanks for all you guys do.

   dave    /nt1u

----------------------------------------------------------

Bill replied:

Thanks Dave.   Yea, that's the 1968 article that launched the use of DC receivers.  I had forgotten about DeMaw's early use of "presence." 

Just to cause trouble, perhaps we should start commenting on "absence"  i.e.  "I dunno OM, I think your rig lacks a bit of absence in the mid-range... turn menu item 63b to ELEVEN!"  

:-)

73 Bill 

----------------------------------------------------------

 

Farhan wrote: 

Mon, Aug 3 at 3:22 PM

When I got my license, my friend Anil SM0MFC was living in Hyderabad. He lent me his HW-8.  I stringed up a 40 meter dipole with a lamp cord and worked with it. Somehow, the combination of the lamp cord length and the 40 meter inverted V made it resonate on 20 m as well. The HW-8 had a nominal antenna tuner and I worked pretty good DX.

Till date, it remains the best receiver that I have used for regular contacts. The only trouble it had was the the MC1496 was a nominal detector, it overloaded heavily with shortwave broadcast stations. There was an unnecessary RF amplifier in the front-end that they could have done without.

I made several direct conversion receivers, but never managed to hang on to any. This makes me want to build one, one of these evenings. I even have a KK7B R1 kit. but real men solder on without any PCBs or even circuit diagram!

A 7/14/21 direct conversion radio that puts out 3 watts of power is what my ideal setup would be. I am not too bothered with the images on CW. I just tune them out in my head. Real soon now, at the moment, i am trying to finish a radio that has been in the works for years.  Finally, I am making some headway.

-f

---------------------------------------------

Farhan of course is no slouch in the DC receiver area.  Years ago he wrote a wonderful post about building a DC receiver with his cousin for her class project: 

 https://web.archive.org/web/20171109081542/http://www.phonestack.com/farhan/dc40.html

Included in this post was a passage that I included in my book  SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electonics: 

--------------------------

Why build a receiver?

    Why do you want to build it? These are available at the Dubai Duty Free asked Harish, an old friend, when he spotted us struggling over the DC40 one evening. I didn't have an answer to this question and considering the amount of work piled this quarter, it appeared to be a sensible thing to ask.

    I think this question is answered by us all in different ways. My personal answer would be because we human beings are fundamentally tool builders. We have an opposable thumb that allows us to grip the soldering iron.

    For an engineer (by the word ‘engineer', I don't just mean those who have a degree, but anyone who applies technical knowledge to build things) the act of building a receiver is a fundamental proof of her competence and capability. It is much easier to put out 1 watt signal than it is to receive a 1 watt signal.

    A simple definition of a good receiver is that a good receiver consistently, clearly receives only the intended signal, such a definition hides a wide range of requirements. The receiver has to be sensitive enough to pick up the weakest signal imaginable (note: clearly), it has to be selective enough to eliminate other signals (only), it has to be stable enough (consistently).

    For a ham or an engineer, building a usable receiver is a personal landmark. It establishes a personal competency to be able to understand the very fundamental operation of the radio and mastery over it.

--------------------

Bill:  OM Ryan Flowers did a 5 part series on building the DC40.  If you are want to build one, I suggest you use the schematics on Ryan's site.  There was an error in Farhan's original schematic -- Farhan corrected it but some of the incorrect schematics are still floating around the internet.  Here is part one of Ryan's series: 

 https://miscdotgeek.com/building-direct-conversion-receiver-part-1/ 

Farhan's DC40

QCX SSB -- But How Much QCX Remains?

Hack-A-Day carried a very nice video describing recent efforts to turn Hans Summers' amazing QCX CW monoband transceiver into a multi-mode, multi-mode (including SSB) rig (see above).   This is project will greatly interest QCX and SDR fans.  

But I wondered how much of the old QCX is still there after the modification.  Not much, it turns out.  

Here is the bloc diagram of the QCX.  It is essentially a phasing rig, using the same principles as my venerable HT-37 transmitter and my version of KK7B's R2 receiver: 

Yesterday Paul VK3HN sent me the schematic of the new multi-mode, multi-band version:  

Notice how different it is.   I thought that perhaps the new rig would keep something of the I-Q circuitry of the QCX, but it does not.  This is not a criticism, just an observation.  

But here is something that harks back to a topic we've been debating on the blog and podcast.  Notice that the top diagram is a bloc diagram.  There is a lot of circuitry in most of those boxes -- lots of resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transistors.   There is a schematic diagram under that bloc diagram.  But look at the second diagram.  While it looks like one, that one is NOT a bloc diagram. That IS the schematic diagram.  Most of the circuity has been sucked into the chips.  

While many will prefer the rig described by the second diagram, I remain an HDR guy, and don't really like seeing the circuitry disappear into the ICs.  But, to each his own.  This is all for fun.  Congratulations to the guys working on the new rig. 

Farhan Visits Northern Virginia and SolderSmoke HQ

 

Our good friend Farhan came to Northern Virginia last week for the 50th Anniversary Symposium of AMSAT.   We were really delighted that he also came to SolderSmoke HQ.  Elisa and I gave him a lightning tour of Washington DC (including a quick visit to The Air and Space museum) and then we headed back to the shack from some radio work. 

In the picture above you can see my BITX-20 (that Farhan designed) off his right shoulder.  Off his left shoulder you sits my ET-2 rig.  I really wanted to show Farhan how well the N0WVA regen performs -- he was impressed, especially when we started listening to SSB contacts. It was really amazing that we were doing this with just one J-310 FET.  This was great fun.  Farhan tells me that he will soon take up the "two transistor challenge."

When he was here in 2017, I tried to demonstrate my version of Rick Campbell's R2 Direct Conversion receiver.  Unfortunately, when I tried to show off the "single signal" capability that is the whole purpose for this receiver, it was NOT producing a single signal output -- you could hear the signal on both sides of zero beat.   One of the small AF chokes I had used had gone open, knocking our one of the two DC receivers.  This time I had the problem fixed and single signal reception was successfully demonstrated.  

Farhan brought me two pieces of test gear that I have needed for a long time:  A step attenuator and a two tone generator.  Paired with his Antuino, these devices will bring about a big increase in capability on my bench. 

It was really great to have Farhan in the shack.  We had a great time talking about ham radio and homebrewing.  Elisa and I both really enjoyed hearing from Farhan about his travels and about his life in India.  We are all really lucky to be in the same hobby as Ashhar Farhan. Thanks for the visit Farhan.

Here is a quick video of Farhan tuning the BITX 20.  

Homebrew History is Made: Farhan @ W7ZOI

Thanks to Wes W7ZOI for sending me the link to his page describing the visit of our friend Farhan.  I think this visit was a historic gathering of homebrew heroes and their groundbreaking rigs. Read all about it here:  http://w7zoi.net/Farhan-visit.html

Please help me convince Farhan to visit SolderSmoke HQ before returning to India!   Send him (or me) e-mails, texts, tweets, or just post messages of support below this post.   

When Bypass Caps are Not Enough: Active Decoupling

I was having a noise problem with my NE602 Si5351 OLED display receiver.   There was an annoying high pitched whine in the audio output.  The source was easy to identify:  If I reached in and unplugged the OLED display, the noise disappeared.  

Next I had to find out how the OLED noise was getting into the rest of the receiver.  It could have been through the SCL SDA or even the ground lines.  It could have been just through capacitive or inductive coupling from the display board itself.  A big clue came when I tried powering the display from a completely separate power supply: BINGO! The noise disappeared. So I knew the noise was going into the rest of the receiver through the Vc line that powered the OLED. 

I had been powering the OLED from the 5V regulator on the Arduino Uno. In an effort to isolate the noise, I put a separate 5V regulator in the circuit for the OLED.  No joy -- noise still there.  I then tried putting an RC low pass filter between the OLED and the 5V regulator.  Still had the noise.  Finally I remembered something from the AF AMP circuits of Roy Lewallen, Rick Campbell and Roger Hayward. ( I think Roy was the pioneer on this one.)  They all used an "active decoupler" between the first AF amp and the power supply line.   I confirmed that it was my first AF amp that was picking up the OLED noise.   I built the active decoupler (just three parts!) and the noise disappeared.  GONE! 

There are only three parts, but the way this circuit works is kind of complicated and not very intuitive.   There is a good discussion of how it works here:

www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/dkelley/elec351/Lab/elec351lab5_sp04.doc

Roy, Rick and Roger were using this circuit to knock down 60 Hz AC hum, but I found that my OLED noise was at around 200 Hz -- I figured (correctly) that the active decoupler would take care of this as well.   I think this little circuit can be useful in dealing with the kind of noise generated by the digi displays that many of us are now using.    

David Rowe has a really interesting analysis of this circuit here:
http://www.rowetel.com/?p=4781

Possibly the Best Ham Radio Interview Ever: Farhan on "QSO Today"

Stop what you are doing.  Run -- don't walk -- to the "QSO Today" website of Eric Guth 4Z1UG.   There you will find his interview with Ashhar Farhan VU2ESE. 

There is so much great information, inspiration and wisdom in this interview.  I was so captivated by it that -- even with the availability of the pause button -- I was unable stop listening even for the time it would take to walk to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup.  But at the same time, listening to Farhan describe the joy of bringing a new receiver into operation compelled me to go over to the bench -- in mid-podcast -- to tweak a receiver that I am working on.

In this podcast you will hear about how Farhan got started in ham radio, about his Elmers about the origins of the BITX, about the Minima and the new HF-1 rig, about Farhan's spectrum analyzer project and about a new goodwill effort to send BITX circuitry to aspiring hams around the world, especially in developing countries.

Throughout you will hear Farhan speak of the importance of the book, Experimental Methods in RF Design. 

I really do think this is the best ham radio interview I have ever heard.  Congratulations and thanks to Eric and Farhan.

Here is the link:

http://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/vu2ese

KK7B's Thoughts on Notebooks, Experiments, and Building

From the r2pro yahoo mailing list:

Hi All,

Some interesting posts lately, with notes or links on "to build or not to build," new H-Mode mixers for HF, and front-end filter intermod.  A recurring thought is that I do lots of projects and each of my projects is a separate design, starting with a bunch of sketches.  I didn't invent this approach--think of DaVinci, for example.  I don't count my sketches, but probably make ten or twenty for every one that progresses to a design of something that would actually work, and maybe only one in ten of those makes it to prototype hardware.  I do a lot of sketches--hundreds for every working radio, and maybe finish a dozen working radios for every one that I write up, either as a good or bad example.

But my sketches all seem to have something in common--they are sketched to do one particular thing well.  They tend to be for one band, one mode, and are designed with particular power supply limitations and the antenna I'm going to use known ahead of time.  They often include at least one but no more than two experiments--something new and risky enough that it might not work.  More than two experiments almost always end up interacting in some unpredicted and dysfunctional way, so I try to limit risky new brilliant ideas to no more than one or two per project.  The key is to do lots of projects, and lots and lots of sketches.

I don't normally operate in brutally strong signal environments, so my dynamic range/IIP requirement is already satisfied with techniques that have been standard since all the excellent work by Wes Hayward, Ulrich Rohde et al. in the 1970s and 80s.  The problem has been solved, like the appropriate number of wheels on a bicycle.  Sure, there are extreme enthusiasts who limit themselves to one wheel and play the bagpipes while riding...  My risky new front-end sketches are often aimed at meeting those acceptable prior benchmarks in some clever and different way, rather than adding a few dB on top of already good dynamic range.  ...Yes, that works well, but I think I'll try doing it this way instead...

Similarly, my input filters aren't the limitation on my intermod performance.  PIM is a big deal in some contexts, and the latest research is fascinating.  Do a google search on Passive Intermodulation PIM to get started on some interesting reading on that topic.

Regarding the question "to build or not to build," I believe that comes down to something very basic: are you a builder?  If yes, then you have no choice.  I can look around my radio room and see a hundred different radios that I've designed and built, and a few more in progress.  If you do the math in my first paragraph above, that's around ten thousand sketches.  My lab notebooks have 200 pages, and I've filled up 140 notebooks since 1975, so that figure is reasonable.  It's just something I do, like some guys go fishing.  Sketches don't take long.  I can do two or three on a half-hour train ride on the way to work.  A complete design to where I start cutting metal and gathering parts might be a few hours a day for a week.  Then another month, maybe a few hours at a time on weekends to finish up a nice project.  There have been more than 2000 weekends since 1975, so even 100 completed radios has left most of my time for other things.

I am very close to folks who are the same way writing code.  They've been filling notebooks with it since grade school, and doing Software Defined Radio since long before they ever encountered the abbreviation "SDR."

If your personal sketches are full of code or CMOS logic, I expect your radios to look and work differently from mine.  If you operate 6m weak signal modes a half mile from a hilltop kilowatt contest station, you have a fascinating set of dynamic range problems to solve.  Years ago, my 11 year old daughter and her best friend thought the absolute best radio ever was the morse code transmitter that Wes Hayward and Bob Culter worked across town using a couple pieces of metal stuck in a lemon for power.  Neither Wes nor Bob would embrace the limitations of that rig for all their amateur radio contacts, but at the time it was a really cool project.

These are just some rambling, Saturday night thoughts, but if you read between the lines you can maybe understand a bit more of why I tend to do things some interesting way that might not apply to your particular application.  One time I accidentally left one of my notebooks at a close friend's house, and he took the liberty of making copies of a bunch of the pages.  I'm not sure it did him any good, but he sure found it entertaining.  There is great freedom in sketching things that have a small probability of actually having to work well in practice.

Enjoy the experiments, and if you have self-identified as a builder, as have many of the denizens of this site, then enjoy making sketches, developing designs, and taking risks that either pay off or end up as learning experiences.

Best Regards,

Rick

EMRFD Joy of Oscillation (Part 1)

Guys:

I have been catching up on the last few SolderSmoke podcasts after
that little QSO Today diversion.  I wonder how many others did the
same thing?  I have really enjoyed these recent 'casts.  Lots of
fantastic HB content.  Funniest moment was when Bill described his
post-project workshop as looking like the aftermath from an electronic
barfight.

I took a new ham up on a SOTA activation last year.  Then about a
month ago, he said that he wanted to do HF HB.  He said he had been
googling and found so much that he didn't know where to start.  I told
him that I'd be interesting in doing a beginner HF HB project with
him.

I could have pointed him to LBS, et al.  I could have pointed him to
the Michigan Mighty Mite.  I did neither.  I pointed him to:http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~campbell/EMRFD1dot34.pdf  Note the name of
the document.  I pointed him also to:http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Product%20Notes/chapter_1.pdf 
(Did you guys know that chapter was online and free?)  We scaled to 20m and
kitted parts for this.  And parts for a 4th transistor PA for serious
QRO.  :-)

Two others joined us building for 40m.  Check out the attached photos
of the first 3.  The joy of oscillation was experienced by all.

After testing each oscillator, and borrowing from an article KK7B ran
in CQ VHF, I told each that he had to ID every 10 minutes.  Even
though nobody was going to hear these signals a few hundred yards
away.  (But it sounds loud on a shortwave portable a few inches away!)
 I even wrote out the dots and dashes for a couple of them.

Next stop:  to have everyone find a curbside TV discard, rip out some
parts, and get on 5 meters!  Haven't we gotten it back now, after the
transition to digital TV?   :-)

OK, maybe the next stop is to add some gain stages and experience the
joy of communication.  The joy of QSO-ification?  The joy of
EM-radiation?  :-)

Best regards,

Drew
kb9fko

2 Attachments

Design Wisdom from Allison, KB1GMX

Allison KB1GMX has helped me out of numerous battles with recalcitrant amplifiers.  She provided an interesting contribution on the r2pro mailing list thread that I referenced yesterday:  

Interesting thread...

 I see Rick as having provided the basis and tools and it up to the collective 'US" to use them to 

create that next generation radio.  All you have to do is decide the performance and 

then go about looking at the means to do so.  All the blocks are there.

Dynamic range, how much is enough?  When I'm portable or mobile raw sensitivity is 

more useful as the antenna is usually a compromise.  Overload is easy to handle with

switchable attenuator.  The exception to this was a radio designed for contesting in a 

hostile environment (a KW user 800ft away) if you burn power you get overload 

performance.  Its not a battery friendly radio (RX power is over 1A for headphone output).

Look at what you need and not what you want.

TX power is just adding stages.  I've worked MOSFETs, LDMOS, GaN FETS and there 

are some pretty cool devices out there and some not designated for RF are cheap.

If all else fails the IRF510 gets both raves and derision.  At 12V its a tepid device

but at over 20V and at 24V it starts to wake up and really perform. I've run The WA2EBY

design for a few years at 45W level using two of those push pull at 28V and its clean and 

solid and the original pair are now over 6 years old!  I also run 8 of them  (4x4push pull) 

at 32V at 6M for a cool 210W  with good IMD.  I'd add all the good (high gain, low IMD) 

power fets perform better at 28  or 50V.   For those into CW consider class E as I've 

worked with this and using GaN fets have generated 15W with 82% efficiency at 

13.56mhz (includes driver and osc) and using the lowly IRF510 at 12V a full 10W 

with 85% efficiency. Class E can be amplitude modulated.

As to the thermionic FETs, a 6AU6 crystal osc driving a 5763 for 10W  gets a lot of raves

on 40M from a buddy that runs CW.  The same deal plate modulated can sound good 

at 5-6W AM on 75M.  For those that want more a 6C4, 6aq5, 6146 will get you over 

50W on CW and 25W AM.  Change the bias a little and inject IQ SSB into the driver grid

and be running 50-80W PEP.  A 12BY7 or 6CL6 driving a pair of 6146 will get you into 

the 180-200W DC input range for about 100W.   Remember the hybrid radios solid state 

low level and rugged tubes for the heavy lifting.  The Pi network (or Pi-L) will load anything 

from about 28 to 100ohms more if you use enough taps and variable caps.  That and DC-DC

converter for the HV are not terrible at 80% or better (even the 1960s transistor designs 

were better than 75%).

In the end it all starts with the receiver.  For that you can always start with a 1T4 RF and 

a 1R4 converter and a 1T4 as regen driving a 3V4 audio.  Power it with 45V (five 9V battery)

and a C cell and go portable.  It should run for a very long while.  Hollow fets run well at low 

drain currents.  :)

Allison

Words of Wisdom from Rick Campbell, KK7B

Rick Campbell KK7B recently responded to a question on the r2pro mailing list.  His answer was so good, and so full of design wisdom that I asked Rick for his permission to post his message here.  Here it is:

I have designed and built several new single band HF rigs for my own use since the R2pro, but have not done any complete transceiver designs intended for others to duplicate.  The R2pro was specifically designed as a set of modules so that a designer can combine an assortment of those modules with others and come up with a transceiver optimized for a particular, personal application.  Much of my recent most design work has been for instrumentation at VHF and UHF, so it doesn't really lend itself to the "high performance at HF" realm.  The R2pro design still holds up well in 2016.

Regarding being inspired to design a new high performance transceiver, I find complete transceiver designs uninspiring, hi.  I personally enjoy coming up with a particular application that isn't well served by anything currently available, and working on some unique design for that particular niche.  Occasionally it has been a large enough niche that I've worked with someone like Bill Kelsey to come up with a commercially available kit of parts, but more often I just design and build a few to fill the immediate need in my lab.  Sometimes that "need" is just a whim, and some of my most enjoyable and technically rewarding work has been to satisfy some personal curiosity or other.

Regarding your wish list:

"Best Sounding Audio Possible" is still the same as it has been since my first receiver with diode ring mixers to do the frequency conversion before any gain, followed by a serious audio amplifier string drawn from the audio recording industry.  In most of my recent work, starting with the R2pro, the limitation on dynamic range inside the audio channel is set by the op-amps.  About 80 dB from the noise floor to non-harmonic artifacts is relatively easy, but you have to be careful.  If the noise floor at your receiver volume control is 80 dB below a volt, that's about 100uV, and well below what you can see on an oscilloscope.  These are very old principles.  Though they haven't been common in the communications receiver field, no breakthroughs are needed, just careful design.  The R2pro is better than it needs to be.

"Good Dynamic Range" is an interesting concept.  I like to design receivers that have good enough dynamic range, which is different for every application, on every band.  Unlike during the 1970s, today most of our receivers have enough dynamic range, in the same sense that cars have had enough wheels since designers figured out that 3 was not enough.  Once you have enough, adding more is not an improvement.

Some of my recent receivers have had a crystal filter between the antenna and first active stage.  Those are stellar, but that's not usually needed.  They do illustrate the point that if you find yourself operating in a hostile EM environment with many very strong nearby signals, there are other ways to address the problem besides in the receiver circuitry.  Ever since I achieved "good enough" for all my personal applications a while back, I've focused on other receiver performance measures.  In particular I try to avoid sacrificing something important to make an improvement in a specification that is already good enough.  I have never been on a hilltop with Wes Hayward when anyone missed a contact because of inadequate dynamic range, but I have been when we missed contacts because the batteries died.

"SCAF type filtering."  I've played with switched capacitor audio filters and other commutating signal processing since the mid 1970s.  Each time I've built one into a  receiver I've run into problems with that danged clock.  I tend to listen at and below the noise floor, and one of my pet peeves is when I can hear anything at all other than pure thermal noise when the receiver is terminated with a room temperature 50 ohm resistor.  Since I routinely record signals for post processing in a DSP system, it is disheartening to discover that some harmonic of the SCAF clock beat against the LO at a particular frequency, ten dB below the noise so you didn't hear it when you made the recording, but 10 dB above the noise floor in your FFT waterfall plot.  So I have avoided such things for my last few decades of instrumentation-grade receiver designs.  When I have a digital dial, I include a switch so it can be turned off when I'm recording weak signals.  None of this applies to you--please continue to experiment with SCAF filters, embedded processors and other generators of digital noise that may well be far beneath the threshold of signals and antenna noise for your particular application.

"Audio output power."  In my lab I generally find about a half watt is more than enough for a radio tuned to a ham band.  In other applications I go as high as 40 watts of audio at the threshold of detectable two-tone IM products.  All of that is nicely covered in the audio literature, and there are a number of good designs available on the web.  The R2pro audio amplifier in EMRFD works well driving a compact, efficient speaker in a quiet room.  For more power output, use bigger transistors and raise the supply voltage up to about 24.  Above that, you need to add Darlington drivers, as in the original R1 and R2 circuit, and you can then raise the voltage up to around 40v with NE5532 op-amps and get more than 20 watts of superb clean audio.  That R2pro audio output stage in EMRFD has been borrowed and modified for more than one very high end professional audio application.

"RF Power" For either audio or RF power, I encourage experimenters to use higher voltages than 12.  Within a few years we should have available some nice GaN transistors that will allow us to use supply voltages up around 80, which really makes it easy to generate many watts of power into either 50 ohm or 8 ohm loads.  If you don't want to wait for GaN, there are some huge N channel depletion mode FETs that run the electrons in vacuum and will easily handle many hundreds of volts on the drain.  They need a separate low voltage supply at an amp or so to generate the electron stream, but are capable of astounding performance, particularly in narrow band applications.  If they hadn't been invented 100 years ago, we'd be all excited about the possibilities now.  A 6146 would just idle along at 5-10w out and last forever.

For my most recent contacts on 40m CW, I used an R2pro and ran a very stable premixed JFET Hartley VFO driving a 6C4 and 6AQ5 output stage.

Enjoy the experiments.

Best Regards,

Rick KK7B

__._,_.___

Back to Divide by 4 -- Big Improvement in Receiver Performance

Thanks for all the comments and advice.  I have come to understand the wisdom of divide by 4 IQ circuits.  

Fortunately it was very easy to convert the divide by two 74AC74 circuit described earlier to a version of the divide by 4 scheme seen above.  (From the SDR Ensemble II Receiver:  http://www.wb5rvz.com/sdr/ensemble_rx_ii_vhf/04_div.htm)

This change provided a great way to observe 1) the improvement in the output signals from the VFO and 2) the resulting improvement in receiver performance, especially opposite sideband rejection.

Here are some numbers. I was very pleased to discover that my Rigol scope will measure duty cycle and phase difference. Thanks Rigol!

AD9850 Divide by 4 :  7.212 MHz  Duty cycle: 48.3  Phase Difference:  87-90 degrees

Si5351 Divide by 2:      7.212 MHz  Duty Cycle 49.6  Phase Difference:   83 degrees

Si5351 Divide by 4       7.212 MHz   Duty cycle 49     Phase Difference:  85-90 degrees

Additional improvement came when I switched the power supply to the IQ inverters and Flip Flops.  I switched from 3.3 to 5 volts:

Si5351 Divide by 4       7.105 MHz   Duty Cycle 49.7    Phase Difference:    90 degrees

When I took the VFO box and put it back in the receiver with the divide by 4 scheme and the 5 volt supply I immediately noticed a big difference in performance.  It was obvious that opposite sideband rejection was back to what I had had with the AD9850, perhaps better. 

I have a quick and dirty method of measuring opposite sideband rejection: I put an RF signal into the antenna connector.  I put the 'scope on the audio output.  I tune (on the desired sideband) for 1kHz audio and I measure the output voltage.  Then, with the audio gain and RF sig gen output in the same positions, I tune to the opposite sideband, again tuning for 1 kHz, again measuring audio output.  With the divide by 4 scheme and the 5 volt supply, the opposite sideband was so weak I had trouble measuring it.  I estimate the rejection to be at least 32 db -- this is back in the range of what I had with the AD9850, and significantly better than I had with the divide by 2 scheme. 

Now I just need to figure out how to get the Si5351 VFO sketch to tune above 42.94 MHz.  For some reason it quits at this point, switching down to 2 kHz output, and keeping me on 30 meters and below.

Thanks again to Todd VE7BPO for a lot of help with the hardware and to Tom AK2B for help with the Arduino code.  
   

Listen to My R2 Phasing Receiver (formerly known as "The Frankenstein" )

I really like this receiver.  Thanks to all who helped. 

Some Inspiring Phasing Philosophy from KK7B

KK7B holding his original Mini-R2

Rick Campbell KK7B concludes Chapter 9 of "Experimental Methods in RF Design" with these inspiring words:

"An amateur who has built up a phasing receiver, looked at the I and Q channels on a dual trace oscilloscope, and tweaked the phase and amplitude adjustments while listening to an opposite sideband signal drop into the noise acquires a depth of understanding far beyond that of most wireless graduate students and many of their professors. The best part is that understanding of phasing systems comes from experimenting with simple circuits and thinking -- the tinkering comes first -- then the understanding. In this area the amateur with his simple workbench; primitive test equipment; and time to contemplate, has a profound advantage over the engineering student with a computerized bench and exam next week, and the professional engineer with a million-dollar lab and a technician to run it."

N2CQR Frankenstein R2 showing I and Q audio outputs

(No exam next week for me!)

N7SUR's Phasing Receiver on an Oregon Pine Board

And here I thought I was the only one.  Apparently not.  Bob LeDoux has also built a phasing receiver using a piece of wood as a base. I note also that phasing guru Rick Campbell KK7B built his Classic 40 DC receiver  into a solid oak wrap-around case.  Bob's receiver is very interesting. That Tayloe Detector is very nice.  Phasing is fun!  As I type I am listening to Lou, EA3JE on 40 SSB with my phasing receiver. 

Bill,

I thought I'd share my breadboard system for receiver experiments.  In this example I have a phasing, single sideband Tayloe receiver. The entire receiver, less VFO, pulls 54 milliamps at 5 volts.

The chassis is a prime piece of Oregon pine.  Be forwarned; my Tayloe receiver doesn't employ a single discrete transistor.

The DDS VFO at the top is the K5BCQ Si570 based RF generator kit.  It reads 56.231 Mhz because the VFO operates at four times the receive frequency on a Tayloe detector.

The receiver consists of five boards. From left to right they are, RF front end filter; Tayloe detector and post detector amps; sideband eliminating phasing filter; eight pole low pass filter; high pass filter and audio amps.

Flexibility is key.  Each stage, or set of stages is laid out on one circuit board which is tacked to the breadboard. Controls and jacks are mounted in scrap circuit board and screwed to the side of the breadboard.

Two parallel lengths of thin circuit board are used for the power and ground strips.  Electrolytic caps are placed at each board power point.  A bit of copper desoldering braid makes the connection between board ground plane and ground strip.

The circuit board is often double sided with the back side used as a ground plane. Holes are only drilled when a ground connection is needed.

Connections between boards are made using .025 diameter header pins soldered to pads.  Wire wrap wire is used for connections between the header pins.  These pins also make good test points.  With SMT construction my intra-board signal lines rarely exceed half an inch.  This eliminates coax cable for many connections.

I like to use eight pin op amps for my designs.  These provide two stages and four poles in each package.  I have a standard board layout.  Using this single board, component selection allows low pass, high pass, band pass, gain, or no gain configurations. Multiple linked boards can be etched at one time and cut apart to meet individual circuit requirements.

Let me give credit to Dan Tayloe who developed the original receiver design in the NORCAL NC2030 CW transceiver.  I also thank Pete Juliano, N6QW and Nick Kennedy, WA5BDU, for help with current design issues.


Bob--N7SUR--

A Good Radio Morning at N2CQR

The Radio Gods were smiling upon me this morning.  I started out on 17 meters and had three nice contacts with European stations:  OH5CZ, a young fellow near Helsinki;  HB8DQL; then RM2D in Moscow. FB.

Then Pete showed up on the Skype. As he has said on his blog, he is still struggling with a family medical emergency, but I am happy to report that he is coping well, making good use of his can-do project manager background and his good sense of humor.  It was great to see him.

Inspired by my talk with Pete, with 40 meter AM playing in the background, I turned to my R2 FRANKENSTEIN phasing receiver.  Last night I completed the 90 degree phase shift network.  This is built around two quad op-amp chips and is designed to take the audio output from the two DC receivers and create a 90 degree phase difference between them.  I tested this stage by sending the same audio into each set of op amps.  I then put one scope probe in the output of one chain of op amps, and the other probe on the output on the other chain.  Wow.  Bingo.  90 degrees of phase shift across the 300 -- 3000 Hz audio spectrum. 

Emboldened by this positive result, I put the completed stages together this morning.  They passed the smoke test.  Then I tuned to 40 meters.   Wow again!  As promised, opposite sideband rejection without resort to crystal filters.  But as luck would have it, I ended up with a configuration that suppressed the Lower Sideband.  For 40 meters, obviously I needed to suppress the other side of zero beat.  But all I had to do to remedy this was to reach into the DDS box and switch the I and Q jumpers on the M0XPD/Kanga UK Arduino AD9850 shield.  This switch put me on LSB.  Very cool.

Here is a view from above:

The AD9850/Arduino DDS box is in the bottom center.  Above that, near the center of the picture,  is the board (from N6QW) with the two SBL-1 mixers and the initial AF amp stages.  The small green board above that is the IC phase shift network.  At the top of the picture you see the 3000 Hz low pass filter. Below that, the board with the little blue pot has an IC AF amplifier and a 300 HZ high pass filter.


I still have to build the audio amplifiers prescribed by the designer, Rick Campbell KK7B.   But obviously I am already having a lot of fun with phasing.  Here is the QST article on Rick Campbell's R2 receiver:
https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/9301032.pdf

New Rig: The FRANKENSTEIN Phasing Receiver

Here is my latest project.  I call it The Frankenstein because of the two BNC connectors that come off the side of the DDS oscillator box -- they look to me like the bolts on Frankenstein's neck. The square waves from the DDS LO also seemed to evoke Frank's bolts. There may be other similarities.  We'll see.

Here is the idea:  Phasing,  Direct Conversion, Image Rejecting receiver based largely on the R2 design by Rick Campbell KK7B  as presented in the January 1993 QST.

I'm using an AD9850 with an M0XPD Kanga board and an Arduino to generate the quadrature LO signals (you can see the square waves on the 'scope in the background).  I'm using the software of Richard AD7C;  this, combined with the divide-by-4 scheme on the Kanga board,  puts the upper limit of reception at 7.3 MHz.  That's OK for now. 

When I first fired up my AD9850 box I was dismayed to find that the square wave quadrature output was no longer there.  I was about to give up and get anther shield board, but this kind of surrender bothered me.  So I started troubleshooting and isolated the problem to the /4 chips. My soldering of the surface mount chips was, well, a bit dodgy, so I changed to a tiny soldering tip and reheated all those tiny little pads.  Hooray!  I fixed it. 

The receiver will be built mostly on a PC board that Pete made for me back when he was trying to convince me to build a fourth BITX receiver.  I am pleased to put the board to use.   See below.

Yesterday I soldered on the two SBL-1 mixers that will form the heart of this receiver.   I realized that the very robust quadrature square waves from the Kanga board might be robust enough to fry the sensitive little SBL-1s.  Sure enough, I measured about 17 dbm coming out of the Kanga board.   I threw together two roughly 10 db resistive pads.  These should prevent the SBL-1s from releasing their smoke.     

I hope this receiver will be four receivers in one:

1) Standard DC receiver.

2) Binaural Receiver!  Groovy, stereo CW that floats around in your head,  man! 

3) I-Q receiver that can be fed into the sound card of the computer for DSP, panoramic display, etc.   I promise not use it to find fault with the signals of homebrew SSB rigs.

4) SSB image rejecting receiver for easy, Direct Conversion SSB listening without the burden of having to listen to the other side of zero beat. 

There is already a lot of soul in this new machine:  Kanga board with the design my Paul M0XPD, PC board made on Pete's $250,000 CNC machine, and all of it on an actual breadboard (from Italy, I think).  

Rick Campbell and Peter Parker have commented on the allure of phasing rigs.  There is something very attractive about them.  There is a cleverness in the way this design exploits the phase relationships between sidebands to allow us to null out the unwanted side of zero beat.  It took me a while to really understand how this is done -- once I understood it, I really wanted to build a rig that would make use of this principle.