My apologies.? I’ve been on the road since before Hamvention and unavailable for the most part.? I’ll be back home as of Thursday AM and have a lot of catching up to do with orders from Hamvention (and a few prior) and documentation with the latest board revs.? Some of the changes to boards are so minor that I did not update the documentation for them.? On the other hand… a few more extensive changes were made to the RF board in the MF section that makes assembly much easier… however not documented yet (IN THE ASSEMBLY MANUALS ONLY… the schematics and BOMs are ALWAYS up to date… the assembly manuals take a complete review to update).

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I’ll be making a few additional minor updates to the MAIN board in the next round of boards I order… the new ISO SPI driver will be incorporated into the MAIN board so the plug-in Display Driver board will then be built-in.? It’s been a big success with over 250 kitted and sold to date.

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Here is some food for thought for next Hardware directions.

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1. LPF is good to go for now.? At some point I’ll release the new PIN diode board to replace the little relay TR switch board.? It will have the new 100W pin diode – full QSK TR stuff and a connection for the new AUTO Tuner.
2. NO changes to the BPF board.? Works well as-is.? I’ve had three people send me their coil winding info which is available on the Github.? Use whichever methods you prefer.
3. Main board… I’ve thought about breaking out the A/D converters to a separate board so that they can easily be changed/ upgraded.? This can be done with no loss in fidelity since it all drives to digital back to the main board.? Anyone care for this?? I think I might also put the SGTL5000 either on the A/D card or on the main board.? This will eliminate the PIN issues we have been seeing with the audio hat.
4. RF board.? A few people are experimenting with different Oscillators… and I think I can do something to make that easy… put the oscillator on a small daughter card that plugs into the RF board where the oscillator now sits.? That way you only change the small board each time you experiment with a new oscillator.?? What I won’t do is put the oscillator on another card and cable it to the RF board like the original V10/V11.? That didn’t work well.? Any interest?? I could make these available as strictly experimenter boards too so the main-stream build does not get sucked into this.

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I’ve been looking into getting BPF and RF boards made with the small semi-conductor parts prepopulated.? On the RF board, that means the PE4302’s and the si5351 would come pre-populated.? The rest of the parts are easy to solder.? The switches on the BPF would come pre-placed.? All at a very nominal cost (less than $0.50 per part plus part cost in the quantity I buy).

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Always looking for your thoughts.

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