Build it? Buy it? Or Plain Forget it?
Like a 1940's Radio Mystery where all you hear was sound effects, but yet it was so real that you felt you were part of the cast. The key difference is our internal imagination that transports us right into the scene. It is like we are in the studio up close and personal. You need no imagination to watch TV!
Scratch Building and Fabricating a SSB transceiver requires that same level of imagination. You find yourself literally transported right into the innards of the rig. Here you look at the circuit modules themselves, the parts placement and how to shrink down everything so it fits in the case that you have. Along the way you might think about circuit interaction and unwanted feedback paths.
Buying a kit is all about not maxing out your credit card and nothing else. But There are some kits that may prove interesting as a springboard into another more significant project.
This is a schematic of a shortwave receiver kit that tunes from 3 to 30MHz and receives AM and FM. The front panel sports an LCD Display, and the docs are all in Chinese. The IF is at 10.7 MHz and the cost is 2.5 Big Mac's at Mickey Dee's. I received this as a Christmas Present.
See if you can see the potential of adding a 10.7 MHz BFO and the possibilities as a General Coverage (useful) CW and SSB Receiver.
Scratch Building Stuff
I have an OCD syndrome when it comes to the building of SSB transceivers as I often am thinking about the next build and am only 70% done with the current project.
One of my future quests is to build yet another smaller version of the Shirt Pocket SSB Transceiver only this time with a goal of 12 Cubic Inches. The size would be 2 X 4 X 1.5 inches.
Such a size screams SMD components all the way. This also means that the Power Output would be low (around 500 Milli-watts). The IF would be a four-pole filter using the short can crystals. The 4.9152 MHz IF Frequency opens the doors to either 20 or 17M.
Don't scoff at 500 milli-watts as Ben Vester W3TLN (SK) built a 100 milli-watt SSB transceiver that operated off of 6VDC as he had installed it in a Pre-1966 VW Beetle (switch over year to 12 Volt Batteries).
The QST article shows a D-104 microphone towering over the very small transceiver case. If you can call 5X7X2 as a small case. The year was 1963 so indeed a piece of advanced technology. The Final Amp was a 2N706. The 2SC5706 will do 500 Milli-watts. Tomorrow I will tell you about the Vester rig and How QST did it again.
73's
Pete N6QW
