Thursday, July 30, 2009

portable sat-comm station VHF PA

Well, not a great deal of technical skill involved here... I was able to locate an Yaesu FL-2025 linear amplifier which attaches to the back-side of my FT-290RII.

The FT-x90RII series appears not to be the most practical for satellite work, however, I now the series, I am one of only a few who actually like the handling and they have those neat clip-on linears. In a /p or /m setup, what counts in my view is having a box, as small as possible, in which all equipment fits uncluttered.
The series however has got a major down-side, tuning steps for European units are 12.5, 25 and 50kHz. Not exactly usable for the FM-sats as AO-51. However, there is help, with a simple mod one can change the FM-tuning steps to 5, 10 and 20kHz. More info on this: here (sorry, the important bit is written in German).

Now that Next step would be to build a crate for the two transceivers (290 and 790) and the linears, ensure sufficient cooling of the linears, provide a common power supply, feed preamp-supply to the antenna connectors, and some additional stuff for operating convenience.

Still a lot to be done, but now that all required gear is present, this work could be started any time.