After rebuilding the DBM and adding better grounds between the circuit boards, I finally put the soldersmoke DCR to the test tonight. No joy. Puzzlement and head scratching. It worked on the bench.? Very quiet when I moved it over to the radio table. A little too quiet. What gives? Ahh... maybe the cable from the coax switch to the DCR?? Yup.? Replaced cable. The tuning is a touchy and the oscillator is a bit drifty but I listened to CW and FT8 and old guys talking about surgery gone wrong and so can declare success.? ?
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It was nice to build something from scratch and my parts bin. Haven't done that in a while. What was even better was all the hours diving into rabbit holes... do I really understand how a double balanced mixer works? or the diplexer? and why is it called a diplexer?? what happens if I tune the BPF while it is attached to to the DBM? how would I add a band spreader to the PTO?? What if I move some of the gain from the audio amp to between the BPF and the DBM?
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And so on.? I am back to digging into mcclaning's "radio receiver design" and SSDRA and breadboarding circuits so I can poke at them with an oscilloscope. I am looking at building a better DCR a little more carefully than I built this one.? Been a fun couple of weeks. Highly recommend it as a past time.
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73 Bill K7WXW
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bill K7WXW