Tag: transceiver

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Lately I have lots of problems with my home made 23cm transceiver. But before I will go hunt for solution I decided it was time to replace the 19-inch casing with something more decent. The 19-inch housing was way to big and not practically because of the thick steel.
So I wanted a somewhat smaller case, preferable made of aluminum. I always liked the cases of MicroHAM so I looked up the dimensions. It could fit in the same dimensions as the USB micro Keyer II.
So I made a design based on those dimensions and cut and fold some aluminum at the club. A lot of drilling and filing had to be done to fit everything. But I’m pleased with the end result. Unfortunately the problems with the transceiver didn’t disappear with the old housing, so I still have to find out what is wrong with it. Since the LF-sound screams when I turn on the volume, I assume it has something to do with the LF-amplifier (LM386) or the radio-chip (MC3362). I tried to reach out to the designer of the transceiver (Bas PE1JPD), hopefully he can help.

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PE1JPD 23cm transceiver kitLast night I visit a keynote from Bas PE1JPD about his 23cm transceiver kit at our local HAM-club evening. It was a very good keynote. Bas was able to find a very good balance between speed and technical depth. He took his listeners from the beginning of design thru prototyping and the final kit. His remarks about the bugs he found (and how he solved them) where hilarious. Bas used very professional slides in his presentation to illustrate the various parts of the schematics. From his answers to questions of the public you could tell Bas really understands designing kits and made really solid choices in this 23cm transceiver kit.

I was so enthusiastic, immediately ordered one. I’m not that much of a 23cm fan but I like this project so much already. I really want to reward the effort Bas put in it.

The 23cm transceiver kit is build around a very smart PLL-solution. Receiver and transmitter share the same intermediate frequency. A cheap Atmel processor is used to control the whole 23cm transceiver kit. A standard 2×40 character with a rotary encoder is the interface.

It is a simple kit which does 23cm FM-only. The idea behind it is to have a pretty straightforward kit with low priced, good available parts.
Bas has prepared a kit with a professional euro-card (10x16cm) circuit-board, all parts and a display. All you need to do is find a case, a speaker and a mic and you are ready to go. The kit price is 142,50 euro’s which is a really sharp price for what you get.

This keynote was outstanding, I wish more people used it as example to model their keynotes. I hope Bas will do this keynote again for other clubs. Maybe the 23cm band will be very crowded, thanks to his project!

More news on the building process the coming months on this blog.