I've just finished soldering up the PCB of the Hendricks BITX20A. Initial tests
have been encouraging. The has Rx been receiving signals even though the 20m
band was rather quiet. No shortage of gain!
Apart from tuning up the band pass filter, I've not had time to tune the rest
of the system. So although I have heard a few of SSB stations, I couldn't
resolve them very well. Anyway, I haven't yet got the fine tuning pot
connected.
Bias levels to the PA driver and output stages have been set and seem work OK.
Not yet applied any RF.
I consider myself to be quite experienced with a soldering iron and have
enjoyed making up this kit. It seems to me that a lot of intelligent design
went into this kit and in particular into the PCB, but I wouldn't recommend it
for anyone who is not confident to work with a fine soldering iron on a very
crowded PCB. The entire transceiver including PA sits on one PCB of only 140mm
x 90mm! Very neat, but crowded.
For now, I shall finish the transceiver as designed, but will eventually use my
Arduino/si5351 based DDS oscillator system in place of the original VFO.
Regards
Ken Hough (M0KOH)
