13 Jun 2009

10m RX using 14.3MHz ceramic resonator

Tried using a 14.3MHz ceramic resonator (in a x2 oscillator circuit selecting x2 at the collector) with the Neophyte derived 10m RX today. Applied the external oscillator to pin 6 of the NE602 and used the on-chip LO as a buffer.

With a 60pF variable capacitor I could pull the oscillator from 28.563-28.641MHz i.e. about 80kHz shift. Adding some inductance in series with the resonator allowed it to pull lower, but I could not make the circuit work reliably with too much inductance. Conclusion so far is that with a ceramic resonator at a better frequency (e.g. 14.23 or 14.24MHz) this would make a neat 10m SSB RX with the Neophyte. A small amount of series inductance would allow around 100kHz shift around the main SSB part of the band.

Next I'm going to try the mixer-VFO using a 32MHz xtal and a 3.58MHz ceramic resonator. This should cover around 28.40 - 28.46 I think.

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