Over the weekend I played part-time in the ARRL January VHF contest.
Part of the time was also spent getting two transverters (rather than
just one) working with the 5000A. The final configuration consisted of:
1. Flex 5000A with V/U module locked to an LPRO-101 Rubidum reference
oscillator.
2. A custom FlexWire box that automatically routes TX3 from the 5000A
to the appropriate transverter and/or amplifier for 2M, 125cm,
70cm and 33cm. The 6M amp is controlled directly by TX1.
3. A Downeast Microwave 10M to 125cm transverter and an external amp.
4. An SSB Electronics LT-33S 2M to 33cm transverter and an external amp.
5. A W1GHZ miniverter (available from Downeast Microwave) to provide
the required 144 MHz, 0 dBm IF for the LT-33S.
6. A manual IF switch to route XVTX/COM to the two transverters (an
automatic FlexWire controlled one will be built soon).
7. External amplifiers for 6M, 2M and 70cm.
8. An EIP 545 frequency counter (also locked to the LPRO-101) to
monitor the frequency of the two transverters which are still
crystal controlled. Once the transverters were warmed up, I was
able to set the LO error in the XVTR form and maintain frequency
accuracy of 200-300 Hz.
One of my goals since first buying the 5000A is to have a single radio
controlling all bands from 160M to 10GHz. In the past, I have used 3
radios to cover all bands from 6M to 23cm. While I didn't have 23cm
operational for this contest, I was able to operate 6M through 33cm
using only the 5000A and the above mentioned transverters. It was very
cool to control everything from PowerSDR and to not be constantly
changing headsets as I switched radios. There were several occasions
where I spotted activity on 2m, 125cm and 70cm on the panadapter that I
might have missed otherwise.
I wish I could report that everything worked flawlessly, but there were
two glitches to the otherwise smooth operation that kept popping up.
First, the transverters stopped working (no signal on the XVTX/Com port)
every time I switched to 2M or 70cm and then back to one of the
transverters. This behavior is 100% repeatable and the only fix I've
found is to exit PowerSDR and restart it (making sure that neither 2M or
70cm is selected when I do so). Second, a problem I have not seen
before, is that occasionally I would switch to 6M and start transmitting
only to discover that there was no RF output from the radio. When this
happened I would have to exit PowerSDR and restart it for 6M to start
working again. I tried to find a sequence of band changes that would
allow me to repeatably reproduce this problem, but so far no luck. I
suspect that it is related to switching to the transverters and then the
V/U module, but have not had time to prove or disprove that. It was not
a rare problem though and probably happened at least 20 times over the
weekend.
Still, I'm pleased and excited by the progress in my station and am
planning to add additional transverters for 23cm, 13cm and 9cm for the
June contest. This is going to make a very sweet VHF through microwave
system.
73,
Clay W7CE
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