First On-Air Test Complete

Well,

Thanks to the help of Col, G4OHV I have tonight tested my Portsdown transmitter on air.

Here's the video Col captured of my TX - Thanks!

Good, egh?

Filters Filters Filters

Well,

Following on from the success of last time; it was time to make some filters around the 146.5 MHz DATV frequency on the NoV allocated bit of spectrum we have above the 2M band.

I've also built up a kit I have had here for a while, it's a PGA144 from G4DDK.

So at the top we have the PGA144, middle is the LPF and bottom is the BPF. The designs are really quite simple - just ask if you need the details. Here's the spectrum from all three:

The yellow is the PGA144 - it has a 20dB attenuator at the input so the signals are actually 20dB higher than shown - the gain at 145MHz is exactly 20dB.

The purple is the LPF being swept and looks just fine.

The Blue is my BPF which I am very pleased with - it looks great.

So next will be a 60W "brick" amplifier for 146.5 MHz - waiting for the bits but I have to go work in foreign parts for a week or two so will pick this up on my return.

Local conditions.

I think its working

Well,

Following from my musings last time on the BATC Portsdown project; I think mine is now up and running.

I've been working on a box for the project and the various bits and bobs are now inside:

So, following the suggested test setup I've configured the transmitter to TX on 1255 MHz using 2000KS (thats the symbol rate) and my newly invented DATV receiver from here sees this:

So I conclude it's working. Now to try and stream some video and then think about external amplifiers and filters!

I've decided to initially aim at 146.5Mhz in the NoV only allocation above 2M as my first target frequency.

I've set the Portsdown to tx on 146.5MHz, 7/8FEC with a symbol rate of 333KS. The output close up looks like this:

Checking on the harmonic content we see this:

So I made a LPF (needed!) and now the output looks like this:

In reality the LPF looks like this:

It is a standard 3 inductor design with 22pf at each "end" and 43pf in the middle two locations. The inductors are 3 turns open wound on a 6mm drill bit.

I've hooked up the BATC supplied EasyCap USB device to the Portsdown and I have coupled up my AntennaCam and we can see this on the MiniTiouner receiver we made here:

So, the next thing I need is a TestCard for TX; enter another great use of a Rasperry Pi. I've installed the software called TCANIM from here. I've followed the instructions to the letter but I cant seem to get a video signal out of the Pi AV socket....

Local conditions.

Portsdown where?

Well,

As part of the project I mentioned last time, I've started to construct the hardware for the BATC Portsdown project.

The fist board I have tackled has been the LO filter. This goes post the AD4135 LO which uses the same development board as we used on the 4.4 GHz signal generator.

This is extreme, extreme soldering! I've invested in a flux pen of decent quality from Farnell and that's made my life much easier. Previously I was using some cheap eBay sourced flux which was a load of dingos kidneys.

Here's the results of my days soldering:

There's basically a 2 bit input thats status determines which of the three on board filters are in line (or bypassed on 23cm). I've tested this and can see three filters, not too sure about their shape though.

4M:

2M:

70cm:

23cm:

Looks a bit odd to me, but lets see.

Local conditions.