There was nothing wrong with the Ugly S9 Generator, but I couldn't resist making a PCB.
Actually, I do prefer "keeper" circuits to be on a PCB, as I think they're more robust - they survive dropping, without bending wires into accidental shorts. What's more, I enjoy making PCBs!
So here's the design, produced very quickly in EAGLE...
And here's the resulting PCB...
It was easy to populate with parts found in "stores" (the "up-market" end of the junk box) - excepting the PCB-mounting phono socket I had to buy from Maplins for £1.39 (HF99). Inveterate readers of this blog will remember the switches from the homebrew attenuator project - I snapped up a job lot from Peter, G7JAB at the Rishworth G-QRP convention.
You will have noticed that the corners of the PCB have a nice radius - carefully chosen to fit in the traditional "Altoids" tin - here is the assembled generator...
This is the first thing I've made in an Altoids tin - it taught me some interesting lessons, not unlike those you must learn to make a ship in a bottle! I'm not sure it is worth the trouble, but it does look "cute"...
In the end, I used a 36 dB attenuator in this version (once again using Alan, vk2zay's excellent calculator) - which gives me S9 and S3 - and I've fitted a 3.579 and a 7.030 MHz crystal. The original NorCal design has four crystals, but I didn't have any 4-way switches in stock!
...-.- de m0xpd
No comments:
Post a Comment