27 October 2013

Transverter 29/70 arrived and switched on

The "ten to four metres" transverter has arrived from Ukraine. The very first impression is that it is indeed SMALL! A picture-to-real comparison with the original 10-to-2 m transverter shows that coils are different, so it has somehow been retuned to 70 MHz. Look at it on a 5€ note:


First on-air test was the reception of the local beacon. I started closing the output on a 50 ohm load "just in case" (yes, I know the load shown is not able to handle more than 0.5W). Then about 4 m of RG58 going to the FT817 tuned on 29 MHz: the local beacon was coming through S7, with the dummy load as antenna! Actually, dummy load or not, it made no difference.

The transverter circuit is very very very simple (and I have spotted one error on the included diagram), but the RX chain is hot. Using the same coax length on the IC706 tuned to the beacon frequency resulted in the same signal strength. So, apart from RF leakage, it is a (good?) sign of life.