I have tried a few times to include a preamp in my DC Receiver project and each time I have had utter failure and that was using circuits that others have used and found to be reliable, so go figure. Rather tan trying to do the most ultra low noise amp, I figure i should just make a class A with a BJT and stick it in the circuit and see how it goes, it cannot be any worse than what I have managed previously, IE Failure.

So i have all the bits laid out ready to ugly build the hell out of this. The transistor is a 2n3866 RF transistor with a FT of over 500mhz, should be more than adequate for 40m HIHI.

Built and ready for testing.

Scope, signal source and power connected for smoke testing.

Feeding it with a very small 7mhz signal. The receiver is for 40m after all.

Success, 4v p-p with 50mv drive, now i just have to wire it into the receiver and see if it works.

On thing i manage to do well, is make a mess. Not so great on the cleaning up or being tidy and organized. But i got a little excited the other day and started to sort out all my stuff and make it into some sort of organized mess, where i can at least find things.

Starting with my component trays, I have them all stacked together now in the one location, the only thing i need to do is to add front lables so i know what is in each tray. Each tray has its own theme so its just a one word label that is needed, resistors, transistors, IC’s, Arduino etc.

So after getting all my componentry away and tidy, i had some bench space left over, and do i cleaned up and organized my work and test area of my bench. Things are nice and clean for now, I just need to find a place for my current project, the 3 boxes on the upper shelf and fill that gap with something nice like a spectrum analyser. HIHI.

So we got some nice winter sun today and I was able to test them out in typical sun conditions and we are making pretty much close to the theoretical maximum they can make, peaking at 550mah and averaging about 440, all in all this is rather good and well suited to the purpose i have in mind for them, keeping a portable rig running longer on a 7ah deepcycle.

So tonight i bout together one of 3 QRP Labs Si 5351a kits that I bought, not for WSPR use, but for future CW or SSB transmitter projects. The synth IC itself is awesome, 3 individually programmable square wave outputs. The kit went together ok, a couple od minor annoyances. The footprints used for the 2 transistors were wrong for the parts being used, and the spacings were kind of wring, there is so much more room on the board that it could have been spaced out better so the resistors did not sit under the cap of the transistors, and the SMA pads were about 1mm too short and required fiddling and spacing off the board before soldering,  anyway, thats about all i can bitch about HIHI.

Parts laied out for install, 3 SMA connectors are not included in the kit.

Resistors installed.

Caps and voltage regulator installed.

Transistors installed.

Final product with headers and SMA connectors installed. Next i will make a board to mount this on, supply power to the 4 different 5v pins???? not sure if it needs 4 different voltage lines, but according to the pinout it does, will need to look into this more. Next job will be to code up some Arduino code to test it and then turn it into a VFO.