A New SSB Transceiver from N6QW

A New SSB Transceiver from N6QW

 

Several years ago I prepared and published an article on a 30M CW transceiver. I designed the radio (it even had RIT) , built and tested the radio, wrote the article and quickly placed it the storage locker. I am not a CW fan even though I did take and pass the real Extra exam when you had to copy 20 WPM. I much prefer SSB and so this project is the best of many worlds.

 

Parts of the 30M CW transceiver have found their way into the ZIA, 20M SSB transceiver and now the mainboard has been reworked to emerge as a 40M SSB transceiver. Some of that effort was to build and install a 6 pole, 5 MHz Crystal Filter and to build an external BFO which will be used to feed the NE602 Product Detector on receive and an SBL-1 Balanced Modulator on transmit.

 

The original 30M CW transceiver had a varactor tuned VFO but the new rig has the Si5351 that will supply only the LO signal. The display of course is the 128X128 Color TFT. I am amazed at how many 128x128 TFT's displays are showing up world wide using code that was developed by me for the Belthorn III; but also is used in the LBS II. This will make the 3rd application. Similar code was used on the ZIA but that has the Nokia with a black and white display.

 

The goal is to have it operate only on 40M LSB and  have a power output of 5 watts. Below is a sneak peek at the new rig al fresco on the work bench. I still need to add the transmit chain and power amp plus the microphone amp which will be SMD. A couple of more days should do it.

 

This is the first major soldering project in the last 5 months.

 



 

 I will update this post as I add more hardware and get the transmit chain working. For info on the original 30M CW transceiver project refer to the 2103 article that appeared in QRP Quarterly.

73's
Pete N6QW