St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Engineers, I was told invented Green Beer. It seems this was his secret weapon to convert the then pagan Irish to Catholicism by getting them drunk on beer. But that may just be Blarney!
Were St, Patrick alive today would he be a ham? We do know of one Irish Jesuit Priest who was a well-known ham, 9N1MM, Father Marshall Moran in Nepal, the Voice of the Himalaya's.
More tests with the RF Board and indeed the addition of the Band Pass Filter cleaned up the traces. I now get close to 2 VPTP on 40M and less on 20M. I used a BPF (dual 20/40M) built for another rig and noted before that 20M seemed a bit "hinky", so I need to revisit the 20M BPF.
There are many stories about St. Patrick, and it is interesting to note that four US Presidents have Irish Roots: Biden, Obama, Reagan and Kennedy. (Source CNN.) Even more astonishing all four trace their heritage to the Great Potato Famine that caused 1.3 million Irish to emigrate to the US to avoid starvation.
But 99.44% of blog readers likely want to get back to electrons. However, a final note of the connection to St. Patrick and Engineers: Beer consumption during college while studying engineering.
I have a plan to create a steerable amp module using two of these RF amp boards and a couple of relays.
The SSB Transceiver Board uses two stages (diode steered) of Dual Gate MOSFET's (one on either side of the SSB Filter). The Bias on Gate Two sets the stage gain. I made that Bias variable from an on board 8VDC regulator and a 10K pot. By injecting a 1KHz tone into the Balanced Modulator I could actually see the optimal setting of the bias level before there was distortion at the output side of the RF Board. That also improved things on the receive end.
Strange ritual dealing with Catholicism and Saints days. Normally a date assigned a Saint (birth, death or special act) is recognized with special celebrations and masses. This is absolutely true with one exception and that is if the Saints Day is a Sunday and especially during Lent. Poor St Patrick will have to wait until next year for his Saints Day recognition but that does not prevent you the Blog Readers from hoisting a Beer or Three in his name.
73's
Pete N6QW (A Mediterranean Irishman)