In message , Brian Reay writes
On 06/03/2015 13:32, Ian Jackson wrote:
In message , Charlie
writes
On Thu, 05 Mar 2015 22:01:39 +0000, Iain Young, G7III wrote:

A HF upverter added to the front end, and you are all set.

Very simple project, a cheap DIL crystal oscillator around 50MHz,
passive mixer with the ports switched around and you have a LF/MF/HF RX
from DC. Some front end filtering and Bob's your unc.

My first 2m QSO was made with a CB set feeding into a home-made
double-balanced diode mixer, and an ancient sig gen as the LO on 118 (or
maybe 177) MHz.

An interesting variation on the typical 28MHz 2m transverter. I'm a
bit surprised there were suitable CB sets around at the time I would
expect you to be starting our on 2m.

I'd always been an HF and (some 4m person), and I never had any 2m gear
until, by chance, I bought a Trio 2200 for £3 at a village car boot sale
(plus an Amstrad 901 CB that I also bought cost £5!). For my CB-to-2m
transversion, I was using my Fidelity 2000 (bought for £15 at another
village sale, for conversion to 10m).

I've never been keen on transverters myself. I still have a Microwave
Modules 2m 70 cm transverter somewhere, they were very popular in the
early 1980s or so. It worked well enough it was the need to keep
swapping things around I didn't like. Fine if you dedicate a radio for
use with the transverter but, in those days, I didn't have the luxury
of suitable radios to do that.

Yes, transverters can be a bit of fiddle. In the 70s, I made one to go
with my 80 to 10m gear (on 14MHz), to get on 160m. It worked OK, but it
was all a bit of a fiddle if I wanted to swap back and forth.




--
Ian