Trying to snow...

The weather's cold enough, but there isn't quite enough moisture in the air to sustain a real lot of snow just yet. Not sure what to call this stuff; sleet, snow - the weather man knows for sure! This is the top of my car, in close-up.

Apologies for the odd layout - I'm tinkering with new Blogger features and haven't quite got the hang of it yet.

24GHz progress

Some time ago, I bought a Verticom MTS1500-151-01 oscillator from the fine Southern California hams.  I never got round to getting it going; too much to do elsewhere.  Finally, I managed to order the pieces/parts from Digikey that I needed for WW2R's Verticom driver board.  Spent a couple days putting that together and getting it on the power meter and spectrum analyser.

Couple of things to note:

• The 78L05 is a small TO-92 device, not a TO-3.
• The power supply has 2 off-board regulators; an LT1086 and a 7808.  Bollt those guys onto a very decent heat sink.  I used a small aluminum square scavenged from something or other and it wasn't big enough at 2-1/2 inches by 2-1/4 inches.  It got too hot to hold after about 15 minutes, but a small 12v fan made all the difference.
• My HP 432A measures +15dBm
• My HP 141T measures about +12dBm
• Use a 20dB pad!
• Spectrum looks very clean, but I need to cal my HP 141T...

 

11880MHz (approx)

0dBm reference

10KHz / division

23dB of attenuation in line