thehxfiles

The HX Files 22

Hello and welcome to Xtract 22 of the HX Files.

As I wright this Xtract of the HX Files it is only a few weeks from
 the Friedrichshafen rally in Germany,

 some more goodies were bought and added to the stock pile (the shed)
 see photo1below.

One of the stores department

                                 Some of the stock to be used in upcoming issues of the HX Files featured in
 Echo Ireland, the journal of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society ( I.R.T.S.),

No doubt some items will come in handy, I hope. (Will I ever learn)?
As you can see from photo 1,
 I might need a new stores shed, but what is a man (hoarder) to do
 as it is very handy to have things in stock and not waiting a couple of weeks for the postman.

Not all ATV (shock and horror)

Just like this time last year, I took part in the I.R.T.S. v/uhf field day, the stations were set up and manned by the Dundalk ARS, (EI7DAR) Dundalk went /p in Colon Co, Louth in io63qs. The 23cms ssb and 70cms stations were setup in the back of Marks (EI9FX) van, the 23cms station was an Icom 910 transceiver, and a single 35el beam, the 70cms setup was a Kenwood TS2000 and a single 18el beam. Electricity was supplied by Marks 3.3kv generator, with the radios and a couple of desk lamps only using up a few watts that left more than enough power to use the most important piece of equipment that was brought to 

Slibh Bragh (our location) the electric kettle .

In photo 2 above you can see Marks rotator which is turned by pulling on the rope to turn the beam, not having a direction indicator in the shack was not much of a hardship as all that had to be done was to use the compass to make sure the beam was pointing near enough to the other station and then some fine tuning to lock-on to them, but it did mean that when the aerials were to be turned someone had to get out of the van with their wetsuit on, yes it was that wet for a time one could say that the ground was flooded.

Bits and Pieces

In photo 3 above, you can see some of the bits and pieces bought in Germany, a couple of centre feeds for some 24 Ghz dishes, also seen are some transitions that will convert the waveguide to sma, an a circulator all for 24 Ghz, a couple of items for 5.7 Ghz, a few panel mount N type sockets with various lengths of coaxial cable terminated with a sma fitting on the other end. The mesh sheets seen in photo 1 will be used for some chassis work and maybe even a front panel or two. With a few projects on the go at the same time, the one described below was the nearest to completion for this journal, and as most of the parts were to hand and no need to dig my way in and out of the shed it also needed the least amount of chassis bashing to be completed I decided to finish it first.

10 GHz Transceiver

The project in this Echo Ireland is reusing an old test/QRP 10 GHz transmitter that I have for a while, but to do anything with it I found that its enclosure was just big enough for the transmitter and the modulator board and no room for any major improvements to it. 

10 GHz transceiver

The bottom of the unit you see in Photo 4 above, is of an old security camera enclosure bought at a car boot sale and it is a good size and would be more than big enough to take the old transmitter and even a receiver and circulator so it now would become a transceiver. After a bit of seeing what went where, the first job was to remove the glass pane that was bonded to the front (some of the ingredients used in the manufacturing of glass would distort/block the signal passing through it), so the kettle was boiled (sadly not to make tea) and with the use of the kitchen sink the water was added slowly over the front of the housing and left to soak for a couple of moments to soften the glue. Using a bit of pressure from my thumbs on the glass a gap started to appear and with the use of a small flat metal ruler as a leaver the glass was removed in one piece, the glass was then used as a template to mark out a piece of Perspex which was then glued in.

 A small chassis was made out of some mesh sheeting, and it was found that some of the holes matched up with the mounting holes in the base of the camera housing, those that were slightly out of line were made slightly wider by the use of a tapered reamer, and with that job done the parts were bolted into place on it. The solfen head was bolted to one side of the circulator and the Lnb on one of the other ones. The LNB “slot” is smaller than the ones in the circulator “slot” and a waveguide adapter was used to connect them together, this was done firstly by drilling some holes in the adapter plate to match the holes on the other parts, both parts have threaded holes and could be screwed together, but the makeup of the circulator meant that the heads of the bolts to be used would not allow them to be screwed in straight, so off with their heads and a slot was cut into the top of them so that a small flat headed screwdriver could be used, the screwdriver was small enough to pass through the circulator from the solfen head side and the  bolts could be tightened. The Gunnmode 4 board was first attached to a chassis and then the Horne type aerial bolted above that. To use the transmitter I simply switch it on and off directly from the PSU (as there is no tx/rx switching unit) audio and video leads run into the transmitter from a camcorder, and to receive a signal I use an old analogue satellite receiver with a length of coax connecting the satellite receiver to the LNB and as a result I can monitor my tx signal whilst transmitting, and turning the tx off I can look for other signals.  The finished transceiver was attached to a pole pointing down my back yard and I will be able to use it to checkout any other 10 GHz transmitters and LNB’s I may be working on.

Finally, may all your signals be P5,  73,s de Pat.