Sometime not too long ago, I was tipped off (sorry, I don’t remember by whom) to a potential rival to the popular Si570 called the Si5351. This PLL-based clock generator IC has a few points in its favor over the Si570: it is significantly less expensive (even with the required external crystal or clock) and… Read More Si5351A Investigations Part 1
Needing to upgrade my spectrum analysis capability, I recently sold my trusty boatanchor HP 8558B to help finance a portion of a new Rigol DSA815-TG spectrum analyzer. Last week I was able to order the 815, and today it finally showed up on my doorstep. I first came across the 815 last year, at the… Read More Quick Impressions of the Rigol DSA815-TG
Progress on CC-Series development proceeds at a reasonably-good clip right now. One of my last big hardware bugs to stamp out is some nasty microphonics that seem to be generated by the combination product detector/BFO. Today, I believe that I made some significant progress towards solving it and wanted to share what I learned. I’ve done a… Read More Single-Ended Mixers and Reverse Isolation
I’m starting to build up the gear for the kitbiz to get off the ground, and the first large investment just arrived at the shack. Thanks to some blog posts from Eldon WA0UWH, I found AmScope.com, who sells all manner of microscopes for low prices. I ended up finding a scope that was very similar… Read More A New Toy for the Shack
Today I finished construction on the circuitry for the RMS-to-DC converter described on the October 1992 QST article by W0IYH on measuring receiver performance. This is an article that I found on the EMRFD CD when I was searching for information on measuring the noise figure of amplifiers and receivers. I didn’t find the article… Read More W0IYH RMS-to-DC Converter