PARC 50 LBS Project Control Board

Another very productive weekend in the shack.  Put together the control board for the LBS project.  The board consists of the Si5351 and Nano boards along with a Nokia display and encoder. 

Used a prototype board for the assembly and it was not to long into the wiring before I was wondering if I should have etched a board.  I suspect that for this board a double sided would be required.  I'm not sure how I will approach that but I guess there is a couple of approaches one could take.  It's likely to be less of an effort to just etch two sides, drill holes and put a jumper in between the two  where necessary.  Advantage here would be not having to worry about the accuracy of the alignment if using jumpers.  And in doing so, this would eliminate the issue of homebrewing plating the thru-holes.

Anyway looking forward to getting this put all together and documenting the performance. I think the real fun will be the real understanding of the different circuits, modifying them for improvements and then putting it altogether in the final package.  I applaud Pete, N6QW for this project. His work in putting it into its final case is outstanding.  Hope I can come close.

73, Peter

LBS Project

Very productive weekend in the shack.  While I ran into some problems with my SNA project, it should be all sorted out in the next few days.  Missing parts and the correct board should be here end of week.  Mean while I took advantage and restarted my LBS project and installed connectors on the various boards and adjusted the BPF board.

I peaked the BPF at 7.150 MHz which should be good enough for now. I'll do a more comprehensive adjustment later once I have the appropriate equipment up and running.  Specifically the Scaler Network Analyzer. It will be interesting in what it shows compared to just tweaking the pots at the frequency of interest. In this case 7.150 MHz.

73, Peter
ve3poa

DDS60

Finally got to spend some time in the shack today, so I built the DDS 60 board that will be part of the SNA kit I bought from Midnight Design Solutions. Should be able to continue with that part of the project this weekend and hopefully finish early next week.  I plan to get back to the Lets build Something project this weekend as well.

The DDS board went well. Had 4 smd's go flying and 2 were a little interesting to find.  But find them I did.  I started off installing the AD9851 chip first.  Might as well get the hard one out of the way.  Messed up the alignment a little at first but corrected it and then did the solder it all and wick off the excess.  Worked really well.  This board does have me thinking I really should look for a finer tip for smt components.  Especially the IC's.

73, Peter
ve3poa

Been very busy with outside work these days. Almost 0 time in the shack.

Much need parts for up and ongoing projects have now been delivered and a couple of more to still arrive and then I can disappear into the shack for a long waited duration. As well I've ordered a SNA kit from Midnight Design Solutions.   http://midnightdesignsolutions.com/sna/

Will be a very welcomed addition to the workbench.  Hope to see it by the end of the week.  This tool will be pressed into service right away for the crystal filters in the project I'm working on now.  The Lets build something transceiver.  http://www.n6qw.com/LBS2.html

Thanks it for now,

73, Peter