View Single Post
  #50   Report Post  
Old March 16th 07, 01:12 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.homebrew,sci.electronics.basics,sci.electronics.design
[email protected] skavanagh72nospam@yahoo.ca is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 15
Default VCXO frequency isn't high enough

On Mar 16, 5:49 am, "W3JDR" wrote:

The series resonance is, for practical purposes, invariant. The motional
parameters (L and C) of the series resonance are such high reactances (small
capacitance; high inductance) that external components have only a tiny
influence on the series resonance.


Yes....this is the point of a VCXO...to allow an almost
infinitessimally small, but still useful, variation about the crystal
frequency while maintaining most of the crystal's stability.

The series resonant frequency is the lower of the two crystal 'resonances'.
The parallel resonance is above it. When you make a VCXO with any
substantial tuneability, you're probably operating the crystal at its
parallel resonance. This leads to the common observation that you can 'pull'
a crystal up in frequency more than you you can pull it down.


Nearly all VCXO's I've run across work the other way. You can pull
the frequency down substantially while maintaining good stability
(typically on the order of 0.1%), but not up. This certainly applies
to the circuit for which the original poster provided a link.

Do you have any examples of practical circuit schematics which use
parallel resonance and which can be pulled substantially up in
frequency ? I assume it should be possible to do with a parallel
inductor, for example in a Franklin oscillator circuit, but as was
pointed out the inductor values can be inconveniently large.

Steve