Given my day job at the Board and Care Facility, not much happening on the bench. But occasionally like now while eating my oatmeal (at 5 AM) I check what Jeff Bezos might be hawking. Several days ago, during an oatmeal ingestion I stumbled across this jewel.
So, what is it? It is a Broadband RF Amp good for 30 dB gain to 2 GHz. The best part about $7 which won't break the bank. Also, since I have no time, it is a simple insert in one of my projects with some cable via the SMA connectors and add power. I used 10VDC. I did just that -- and it does work!
Now for a couple of things as my time constraints did not permit an exhaustive evaluation like actually seeing if it will amplify to 2GHz or if it suffers from gain compression or that it really does 30dB at HF.
But a simple test of inserting it in line and removing it makes the difference of hearing or not hearing signals on 20M on one particular test transceiver.
What would be interesting is to evaluate its capabilities as a low level transmit pre-driver stage following a mixer stage. That too would be of great interest. A relay steered stage could have this as a Receiver RF Amp and Transmit Pre-Driver stage.
For about $19 there is a linear amplifier stage good for 1.6 watts to 500 MHz. One that really caught my eye was 4 watts at 500 MHz, but it got so many negative reviews that I would steer clear of that puppy. The 1.6-watt job got some positive reviews getting 1.5 watts out at 5VDC.
This is the time for some blog readers to suggest not looking at such products because it has an Integrated Circuit, and you can't touch or feel the soul of the individual components. Get a Grip, it is a low-cost RF Amplifier Stage in a small form factor!
But in response to those few, I think that you would be hard pressed to get a TIA amp to do 2GHz with 30dB gain. (A 2N3904 drops off the cliff past 300MHz.) So, this is a good example of how new technology give us capabilities that would be hard to replicate using outdated methodologies.
The size and cost (and overnight availability) weigh heavily on the decision process. Caveat Emptor -- rigorous testing has not been done and my Nano VNA's are still gathering dust, but a simple go no go test has shown some very promising results.
73's
Pete N6QW