13GHz Sig Gen - you can't be serious?

Well,

You may recall back here when I became very inspired by a project by GM8BJF using some eBay sourced Chinese modules to create an ADF4351 based signal generator.

There's another variation on that theme that has been published in the May 2019 Scatterpoint. Scatterpoint is the journal of the UK Microwave group, membership is about 3 bob and a conker so you have no excuses for not joining.

This time it uses an ADF5355 to generate signals from 52MHz all the way up to 13.6GHz.

The 4.4GHz generator has proved extremely useful, this one is a must.

I've modified the design and the software a little so that the 100MHz clock is generated by am ADF4351, rather than an OCXO as per Brian's design.

Brian has made the software available here, and my modified version is here. The AD4351 is a version of the evaluation board from SV1AFN - and it gets its reference from my 10MHz shack frequency reference.

The software runs on a SAMD21 ARM Cortex M0 which runs at a 48 MHz clock rate. This is supported by the Arduino IDE but is not something I had used before.

Its still WIP, but the project is up and running OK.

How cool is this?

Here's Miss Maggie Cat and Miss Pepper Cat doing what they do best:

A Starter for 10 GHz

Well,

Due to being rather poorly and  ending up having my thyroid removed, I've not done much in the way of radio.

However, for some time now I have been interested in learning more about the microwave bands and the amateur allocations we have in that part of the spectrum.

I attended a Microwave Roundtable event at Finningley ARS quite a while ago and met some very clever chaps who messed about at these frequencies. As a consequence I have been trying to create a "starter for 10GHz" in the background for a while.

The heart of the system is a transverter from Kuhne Electronics - this is a basic 144MHz to 10GHz transverter. To utilise this device you need a few ancillary bits to create a system, but mainly an antennamabob and a TX RX relay.

Here is the main transverter box with the other bits and bobs completed:

You can see the TX/RX relay - this is a latching RF relay which is fired from 12V using the circuit on the veroboard you can see. There is a BNC socket for an external 10MHZ signal; conviniently just like the one I made here: GPS OCXO, there's an SO239 for the IF (which is 144MHz) plus a line from the IF radio for PTT. A couple of LEDs and that bit is complete.

I managed to find two different antennamabobs for 10GHz, there's this one:

and this one:

I also bought myself an old satellite dish of eBay for £10:

So with a little bit of metal bashing and a speaker tripod, I have ended up with this:

I have simply mounted the smaller of the two 10GHz horn antennas in the same place that the LNB was when I got the dish.

Now, how on earth do I test this???

I will be using my FT-817 as the 144MHz driver and receiver, but I have no test gear for these frequencies so generating a signal to test the RX was going to be tough.

In steps Kevin, G3AAF. He has done some very clever things with a common bluetooth module using software and has come up with an RF source which can be used as a kind of home beacon/test RF source. It's called BTThing:

I've added the box and an PCB antenna from Sam, G4DDK:

So this set to 2592 MHz will give me a harmonic in the 10 GHz band at 10,368 MHz; and lo and indeed behold I can hear this signal on my setup.

I haven't yet tried the horn and dish combination but will set up a test area somewhere in the house tomorrow and give it a whirl.

I've had a kind offer of some elmering in these matters from Peter, G3PHO so I should be able to test this out fully when he has some time.

Here's our Elmo dog for a change:

Local conditions.