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.
