Hi Greg,
Thanks for the update. I'm looking forward to the next release of
PowerSDR. My schedule is really busy for the next week or so, but I'll
try to figure out how to repeatably reproduce the 6M issue so you can
verify it.
73,
Clay W7CE
On 1/25/2011 7:40 AM, Greg Jurrens wrote:
Good morning Clay.
I hope you've recovered from the weekend. I'm still hearing EM10 EM10
EM10 in CW from every appliance in my home......
Thanks for the report on your FLEX-5000A project. Sounds like it's
coming together. You are very close to the VHF'ers holy grail of 1
FlexRadio, all VHF bands!
I want to report on your 2 glitches:
1. Switching from VU5K 2m/70cm >> XVTR >> 6M causes the XVTR port to
become disconnected. Yes, this is a bug and has been resolved.
Actually Abed and I spent an entire day going through what we hope is
EVERY combination. The signal routing complexity went up by 2^^n+1
when we added the VU5K to the FLEX-5000A. We are hopeful we've
knocked this one in the head. The next release includes this mod.
2. The 6M loss of power out is a new one but I'm suspicious it's
related to item 1. The signal routing problems occur at the low
signal levels. If the routing gets "lost" then there is a chance we
simply aren't getting any power to the PA. I will verify this one and
if needed open up a new Defect report.
Thanks again for your report and the feedback.
73,
Greg - K5GJ
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Clay W7CE <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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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Greg Jurrens - K5GJ
VP, Sales and Marketing
FlexRadio Systems Inc.
T: 512-535-5266x203
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“Tune in Excitement” ™
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posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are
using beta versions of the software.
