First, let's dispense with the red herring of backward tuning. The VFO does tune backward on 75 but it has nothing to do with sideband inversion. The USB/LSB business works the same way with a fixed LO as with a VFO, and it works as I described.
When you mix a 5 MHz signal with a 9 MHz signal, there's no need to stand on your head and pretend that you're subtracting 9 from 5 to get minus 4. Instead, you go back to second grade and subtract 5 from 9 and get 4. Working the sideband part into it with a 9 MHz USB signal and a 5 MHz LO - Suppressed carrier freq: 9.000 minus 5.000 = 4.000 3 kHz modulation tone: 9.003 minus 5.000 = 4.003 Just as a sanity check, take another look at your own negative number example, Joe, and 'splain to me how 5.000 minus 9.003 gives minus 3.987. OK, I'll grant you a typo and assume you meant minus 3.997, but you're still wrong. It's minus 4.003. John, KU4AF Pittsboro, NC On 11/22/2011 4:04 PM, KU4AF wrote: > Whatever the genesis of the LSB/USB convention on the ham bands, > this conversion scheme wasn't it. Mixing a 9 MHz USB signal with a 5 > MHz VFO will produce a USB output on either 4 MHz or 14 Mhz. The > sidebands only get inverted in a mixer when you subtract the SSB > signal from a higher frequency Try the math again ... If you have a 5.0 - 5.5 MHz VFO and subtract a 9 MHz USB signal from that VFO you end up with a LSB output that tunes from 4.0 - 3.5 MHz in reverse. Start at 5.0 and subtract the 9 MHz carrier frequency you get *minus* 4.0 MHz (carrier frequency) when the highest modulating frequency (3 KHz or 9.003 MHz) is used you end up with *minus* 3.987 MHz - *lower sideband*! Do the same with the VFO at 5.5 MHz and you will find LSB at *minus* 3.497 to 3.500 MHz. A mixer can produce F2 +/- F1 just as easily as it produces outputs at F1 +/- F2. If you don't believe this ... spend some time reviewing the early SSB transmitter and receiver articles in QST from the 1950s or borrow a Drake 1A/2A/2B and learn why some bands "tune backward." 73, ... Joe, W4TV -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/US-60-Meter-Band-Changes-Approved-by-FCC-tp7011949p7022509.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html