On Mar 20, 7:43 pm, "Anthony Fremont" wrote:
This sounds like what Chris Jones was talking about. Do you have a link so
I could check it out?

In addition to the low-noise-low-distortion-high-stability URL's I
pointed you towards in my other followup, recent ARRL Handbooks have
some really clever low-noise VFO circuits using a multitude of
approaches, including explicit AGC circuitry. I have been slowly
working my way through the cookbook examples and every example has its
merits.

In typical ham use, for better or worse, stability and reliability to
start-up are often the most important criteria. What you are
complaining about when you see a distorted output, is something that
is actually a design goal of oscillators that are followed by
multipliers.

One very common method over the years of decoupling the frequency-
determining tuned circuits from other frequencies generated in a radio
is to run the oscillator grid tank at half the output frequency and
depend on distorition to make the desired output frequency. In the
simplest case a balanced or push-pull oscillator is a "No-No" because
you WANT the second harmonic. The electron-coupled oscillator that was
in the 50's/60's/early 70's handbooks is a classic design.

Tim.