Finished the 1st one and It's ok, but I'm pretty sure it can be done a lot better.
Some mistakes:
Ordered my box before I sized the display, so limited myself to a 5" display
Built my power supply before I found out the total current draw, so it needed to be done twice.
Tried to use my sabre saw to cut out the display hole.(!)
Got the hole big enough, and managed to mount all 4 display corners on standoffs, but I'm going to need to find a way to patch the gubered saw job.
Bought too many parts.
(Way too many mistakes from a 50 year veteran!)
Some things for improvement:
Starting from scratch I bought a box big enough for the 7" display, (again steel, blue, from china), will use my dremel or nibbler to make the display hole!
Bought the v5 ubitx and noticed the offensive relays and inductors remain on my new v5 board. Plan to replace
A buying mistake that turned out well was the replacement signal relays from eBay. The ones i bought do the job for 1/3 current draw..
My new power supply has a transformer capable of 100 va, and it's got multi-taps, so my next Jackal won't have any 3.3 v regulators that get too hot, or 12v neither.
For the future:
The 3904's are barely functional above 30 mhz (and the 1st if's 45 mhz). There are bunches of better parts for most of them. My new power supply has a tap for 50v so the final is probably going to need bigger heat sinks and fet's and I don't like push-pull- parallel amplifier stages, when push -pull will do.
My thoughts from the 1st one while getting ready to do a better one.
A lot of fun so far!
Ron W0QVJ
??
