My Franklin VFO
Lee KD4RE of the Vienna Wireless Society has been talking about the Franklin oscillator. He has been telling us that it is very stable, and capable of stable operation up through the ten meter band. Lee wants to build an direct conversion receiver for all of the HF bands with one of these circuits.
I was skeptical. First, I'd never heard of this circuit. I'd grown up in ham radio on a steady diet of Hartley and Colpitts and Pierce. Vackar or Clapp were about as exotic as I got. And second, I'd come to accept that it is just not possible to build a good, stable, simple, analog VFO for frequencies above around 10 MHz. For example, in his Design Notebook, Doug DeMaw wrote, "VFOs that operate on fundamental frequencies above, say, 10 MHz are generally impractical for use in communications circuits that have receivers with narrow filters." DeMaw was known for resorting to variable crystal oscillators.
But then this month Mike Murphy WU2D put out two videos about his use of the Franklin oscillator circuit in a direct conversion receiver at 21 MHz. The VFO was shockingly stable. I began to believe Lee. I fired up my soldering iron and built one.
WU2D's Franklin Oscillator
Lee was right, it is in fact remarkably stable, even at higher frequencies. My build (see picture above) was a bit slap-dash and could be improved a bit, but even in these circumstances here is what I got. This was with a stable 6 Volt Supply and with only a cardboard box covering the circuit:
Local time Frequency
0543 19.1114 MHz (cold start)
0636 19.1116
0804 19.1117
1034 19.1118
1144 19.1117
I started digging around for references to the Franklin. There was nothing about it in Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur, nor in Experimental Methods of RF Design. Pat Hawker G3VA (SK) did discuss it in his Technical Topics column in RADCOM, February 1990. Pat gave a great bio on Charles S. Franklin (born in 1879 and a colleague of Guillermo Marconi). But tellingly, Pat writes that, "Despite its many advantages, the Franklin oscillator remains virtually unknown to the bulk of American amateurs."
QST "How's DX" August 1947
It wasn't always unknown. In the 1940s, we see articles about the Franklin oscillator circuit. There is a good one in the January 1940 issue of "Radio." The author W6CEM notes that the circuit "is probably familiar to only a few amateurs." It shows up in the "How's DX" column (above). And the 1958/1959 issue of Don Stoner's New Sideband Handbook we see a lengthy description of the Franklin oscillator. Stoner wrote: "The author's favorite oscillator is the 'old time' Franklin, and it is believed to be the most stable of them all! This rock-solid device can put a quartz crystal to shame! Because it represents the ultimate in stability, it is the ideal VFO for sideband applications." And we see a PTO-tuned Franklin oscillator in the July 1964 QST.
And it is in the fifth edition of the RSGB Handbook (1976).
Here is the January 1940 "Radio" with the Franklin oscillator article on page 41 by W6CEM:
Here is the July 1964 QST article:
There was an article about the Franklin oscillator in 73 magazine by W4LJC in February 1999:
The author notes that:
Look, there may be reasons why the Franklin oscillator has been ignored. But the circuit sure seems to present a lot of advantages. Stable operation beyond the 10 MHz barrier is the big one. Simplicity is another. If there are problems and shortcomings, let's hear about them. But it seems as if the Franklin oscillator may provide the opportunity for us to build stable VFOs beyond 10 MHz without resort to complicated PLL stabilization techniques, and without opting to go with an Si5351 or other complex digital devices.
So let me ask: Why hasn't the Franklin oscillator been given more attention, and why haven't we seen more use of this circuit by hams or even by manufacturers?
