A new approach to 13cm

Well,

You may recall back here where I built a 13cm capability. I've decided to go about it a different way.

Instead of sending lots of RF up lossy coax with a fixed station arrangement, I'm going to generate less RF but right next to the antennamabob and make the whole setup portable.

So here we have 13cm take 2:


In here we have the transverter, sequencer, the VLNA, a SMA relay and driver, plus this PA will also fit; but I dont have the PA yet. The wonky board you can see is a FET driver to switch the PA bias supply on during TX; that will be mounted on top of the PA once I have it here.

I've hooked up my XL Microwave power meter to the output of the Transverter via a 40dB attenuator and I am measuring:


about 32.5 dBm so close to 2 watts - exactly on the money of the transverter spec.

The PA needs a 1W drive so I will have to attenuate the TX signal by 3dB to get that correct.

Good, egh?