Avery Fineman wrote:

In article , PAMNO
(N2EY) writes:


Time for a radio story...

Back in high school I knew a local ham down Collingdale way who was always
working on a pet project. Same age as me, saw him in school every day. Had
all
kinds of grand ideas of how he was going to build the next generation
state-of-the-art ham rig. All solid-state, full features, all bands, all
modes,
etc.

Now this kid was no dummy and his ideas were basically very sound. But he
didn't have anywhere near the resources or practical experience to actually
finish anything. He'd draw all kinds of schematics, spin all kinds of yarns
and
sometimes even gather some parts. But build a working rig? Never happened.
Not
once. When he *did* get on the air, it was with borrowed equipment that he
conned some local ham into lending him "temporarily". Until said local ham
had
to come over and take it back. I made the mistake of loaning the kid a QST,
which I never saw again. I learned fast.

Meanwhile, those of us willing to make do with less than "SOTA" were on the
air
and having fun and QSOs while he pontificated.

That was about 35 years ago but the lesson is still valid: All this bafflegab
doesn't make one QSO.

For some reason I was reminded of him. He sounded just like Len...

Poor baby. Still with the insults sugar-coated with hypocritical
"civility?"

Tsk. I lost interest in DXing in "radio sports" and the wallpaper
collection of QSLs after working at station ADA long ago.

Really? Did you do lots of contesting and DXing from ADA? Still have
the QSLs?

Became a professional in the radio-electronics industry, got regular
money for not only designing, but building and testing, following
through in the field, etc., etc., on many projects.

Do you find that without honor? Without any worth?

Len, I have known many men who have done similar work. With few
exceptions, I have viewed their work as honorable. It obviously had
worth as all of them received paychecks. We radio amateurs don't
receive paychecks for what we do. We do it strictly for the love of
it. I'm sure your professional achievements have pleased you. They
don't get you any passes in amateur radio. What pleases you hasn't
necessarily impressed us.

Your grating manner and rudeness to radio amateurs have not endeared you
to more than a couple of people here. You strike me as the kind of guy
who goes wandering through life asking, "Why don't people like me?".
I'll bet you haven't an idea of the answer.


The main point is simple: Hams did not need synthesizers to stay in their
bands and subbands. Nor do they need 1 Hz or even 10 Hz accuracy on HF.

In Jimmie's world, yes. :-)

....in anyone's world, Leonard. It is simply fact. You were wrong. :-)

Deal with it.

Dave K8MN

In article , Dave Heil
writes:

In article ,

(N2EY) writes:

Time for a radio story...

Back in high school I knew a local ham down Collingdale way who was always
working on a pet project. Same age as me, saw him in school every day. Had
all
kinds of grand ideas of how he was going to build the next generation
state-of-the-art ham rig. All solid-state, full features, all bands, all
modes,
etc.

Now this kid was no dummy and his ideas were basically very sound. But he
didn't have anywhere near the resources or practical experience to
actually
finish anything. He'd draw all kinds of schematics, spin all kinds of
yarns
and
sometimes even gather some parts. But build a working rig? Never happened.
Not
once. When he *did* get on the air, it was with borrowed equipment that he
conned some local ham into lending him "temporarily". Until said local ham
had
to come over and take it back. I made the mistake of loaning the kid a
QST,
which I never saw again. I learned fast.

Meanwhile, those of us willing to make do with less than "SOTA" were on
the
air
and having fun and QSOs while he pontificated.

That was about 35 years ago but the lesson is still valid: All this
bafflegab
doesn't make one QSO.

For some reason I was reminded of him. He sounded just like Len...

Poor baby. Still with the insults sugar-coated with hypocritical
"civility?"

Tsk. I lost interest in DXing in "radio sports" and the wallpaper
collection of QSLs after working at station ADA long ago.

Really? Did you do lots of contesting and DXing from ADA? Still have
the QSLs?

Tsk. Poor Davie doesn't understand that 24/7 REAL communications
in the military wasn't any "contest" and no "QSLs" were exchanged.

So, Davie, did you do much contesting from those embassies in
the middle of Africa or from Finland? Get many QSLs?


Len, I have known many men who have done similar work. With few
exceptions, I have viewed their work as honorable.

I'll bet you didn't understand much of it...

It obviously had
worth as all of them received paychecks.

No "A" grades on their report cards? Tsk.

We radio amateurs don't
receive paychecks for what we do. We do it strictly for the love of
it.

Tsk. Ask the behind-the-counter types at HRO if they do 9-5
for free... :-)

I'm sure your professional achievements have pleased you.

They sure did.

They don't get you any passes in amateur radio.

Yes, and amateur radio licenses don't mean squat to legal
operating in the rest of the radio world.

Sunnuvagun!

What pleases you hasn't necessarily impressed us.

Yes, your supreme royalness. Humblest of apologies, your worship.

Your grating manner and rudeness to radio amateurs have not endeared you
to more than a couple of people here.

Awwwww.

Tsk. Nothing an NCTA says can please the PCTA extras...or the
World's Greatest DXer. :-)

You strike me as the kind of guy
who goes wandering through life asking, "Why don't people like me?".

Tsk. Don't project your own personality on others.

I'll bet you haven't an idea of the answer.

Tsk, tsk. We all know you don't.


...in anyone's world, Leonard. It is simply fact. You were wrong. :-)

Nope.

Deal with it.

No problem.

Now, why can't Mr. DX handle opposite opinions to his?

Answer: He never could! :-)

(Avery Fineman)(so desperate to get past spam filters that he changes screen names)wrote in message ...
In article , PAMNO
(N2EY) writes:

In an ideal superheterodyne, all the oscillators would generate pure, steady
injection signals. In reality, there is always some imperfections in those
oscillator signals. In modern frequency synthesizers, particularly PLL types,
the imperfection takes the form of noise sidebands on the oscillator signal.

Technically wrong. DDS is more susceptible to spur generation and
phase noise than Fractional-N and Fractional-N is more susceptible
to that than PLLs.

Tsk. You haven't spent much time with a spectrum analyzer...

Sure have. You can nitpick over the minor points but the main thing is
correct: Frequency synthesizers do not produce perfectly clean LO
signals, and that phase noise in the LO causes performance degradation
in HF ham gear.

Trouble is, in the amateur HF environment we often want to listen to a weak
signal surrounded by many strong ones, often only a kHz or two away. Good
crystal and mechanical filters make it possible to separate such signals *if*
they can get to the filter in decent shape.

What happens when the LO signal is phase-noisy is that a close-in-frequency
unwanted signal mixes with the LO *noise*, and produces noise in the receiver
output. With a whole bunch of strong signals, the noise can be so high that
it drowns out the wanted signal. This problem is not due to IMD, blocking or
other
various nonlinearities in the front end - it's due to phase noise alone.

Tsk. Simplistic untruth.

No, it's true. You just don't understand the point.

I should have included a clarifying phrase in the above, but I thought
the average technically knoweldgeable reader would understand the
point anyway.

The clarifying phrase is:

"Even with an ideal receiver front end"

meaning that even if IMD and IP3 aren't causing problems, phase noise
*alone* can cause the apparent noise floor to rise if there are strong
adjacent-channel signals.

Note how, in lab tests, there is sometimes the annotation "noise
limited" when certain tests are made. What do you think that term
means?


Intermodulation distortion and front end noise is enough to cause that.
As part of the IMD, the 3rd Order Intercept point values figure in.

Only if the LO is clean enough to allow it. Note how, in lab tests,
there is sometimes the annotation "noise limited" when certain tests
are made. What do you think that term means?

You can get IMD in stages beyond the mixer. To "prove" that point,
you would have to measure the IMD at various gain settings (manual
or AGC).

Of course. But even in an ideal signal path, phase-noisy LOs can
degrade performance. That's the point. Note how, in lab tests, there
is sometimes the annotation "noise limited" when certain tests are
made. What do you think that term means?

The worst part of that untrue statement is that "all those other things"
were existant before the advent of frequency control by synthesizer.
In ham radios as well as the radios in every other radio service.

Nobody denies that. However, in many sets the phase noise is the
limiting factor. Particularly in real-world situations.

1 Hz is common in modern manufactured amateur equipment. But that's not
really the issue.

Tsk. Why are Jimmie and Kellie trying to make so much of that
resolution? :-)

You brought it up ;-)

R-70 is a pretty good receiver. Almost qualifies as a boatanchor now....

Only for a small liferaft. It can be easily carried in one hand. It comes
equipped with a handle on the side, apparently for that purpose. :-)

But, you will try to use my owning an R-70 as all sorts of denigrations.

Like what?

R70s were made 1982-84 (approximately), so the design is at least 23
years old (1981). You frequenctly denigrate others as "behind the
times", yet the R70 is the newest/most modern piece of HF radio
equipment you mention owning. Just another example of "do as Len says,
not as Len does".

Kellie did...and was completely wrong...but then he only "favors" those
equipments that he's owned or has handled.

Just like you, Len ;-)

Have you ever used the receiver he mentions?

How many points did Len get with it in the last CQWW? Or even the last SS or
Field Day?

Irrelevant.

No, completely relevant. One important measure of amateur equipment
quality is how it performs in actual on-air operation.

Had I an HF-privilege ham license, I wouldn't bother with
contesting. I've said that before.

So the answer is: Zero.

There are VHF/UHF contests - including Field Day.

If I wanted sports, I would go to athletics...REAL sport.

Who decides what is "real sport"? You're not the IOC. Or TAC ;-)

[if I wanted "road races," I'd get a sports car as I used to have and
do minor gymkhanas, etc., in REAL road races]

The term "road race" is not limited to motor vehicles. It's
understandable that you don't like sports.

btw, some years back I was there, at NIST in Boulder. Saw the various
standards
and how they keep WWV synchronized. Also visited the WWV/WWVB transmitter
site. Got lots of pictures, too.

Okay, so your resume got rejected.

Nope. Didn't bring one; wasn't looking for a job.

Sorry to hear about it. Glad you
got nice pictures.

Anyone can see nice pictures at the NIST website.

Not the same as being there. It seems you enjoy only second-hand
experiences.

Still living in the past...

Tsk. You are repeating yourself...as you've done many times in the
past.

Not nearly so many times as you, Len. ;-)

Time for a radio story...

Back in high school I knew a local ham down Collingdale way who was always
working on a pet project. Same age as me, saw him in school every day. Had
all
kinds of grand ideas of how he was going to build the next generation
state-of-the-art ham rig. All solid-state, full features, all bands, all
modes,
etc.

Now this kid was no dummy and his ideas were basically very sound. But he
didn't have anywhere near the resources or practical experience to actually
finish anything. He'd draw all kinds of schematics, spin all kinds of yarns
and
sometimes even gather some parts. But build a working rig? Never happened.
Not
once. When he *did* get on the air, it was with borrowed equipment that he
conned some local ham into lending him "temporarily". Until said local ham
had
to come over and take it back. I made the mistake of loaning the kid a QST,
which I never saw again. I learned fast.

Meanwhile, those of us willing to make do with less than "SOTA" were on the
air
and having fun and QSOs while he pontificated.

That was about 35 years ago but the lesson is still valid: All this bafflegab
doesn't make one QSO.

For some reason I was reminded of him. He sounded just like Len...

Poor baby. Still with the insults sugar-coated with hypocritical
"civility?"

Are you insulted? Why?

The above story is true. The ham involved (actually an ex-ham; he no
longer shows up in the database) behaved exactly as described. He
probably went on to a career in electronics in some capacity or other.
And as I said, most of his ideas were pretty good - he just never
carried them to completion or even to partial implementation. At least
he held a ham license for a while - you haven't even done that.

You *do* sound just like him, Len. Lots of words and lots of put-downs
and lots of theory. But in terms of actual radios built on your own
time, with your own resources, from your own design....nada. Zip.
Zilch. Zero. Nothing. Not that anyone here knows about in all your
years and petabytes of posting.

I even looked through the online database of ham radio magazine
articles. You had 24 "bylines" in ham radio from 1977 to 1982 (even
though ham radio magazine was in operation a lot longer than that).
Most of them were in the 1977-79 time frame (20 bylines). Not one
"build this radio!" article - lots of commentary, some theory, lots of
basic stuff on digital logic theory.

Last mention was over 22 years ago...

You talk about "independent thought". Designing and building a ham
station with only one's available personal resources requires a lot of
independent thought - and action. It also explodes the myth of
amateurs as simple consumers of manufactured products.

Tsk. I lost interest in DXing in "radio sports" and the wallpaper
collection of QSLs after working at station ADA long ago.

To each his own. Why do you denigrate what others find as fun? What is
wrong with live and let live?

Became a professional in the radio-electronics industry, got regular
money for not only designing, but building and testing, following
through in the field, etc., etc., on many projects.

Completely different game. You sound like someone saying the Tour de
France is no big deal because you did the same route in a car in less
time. Or that a marathon is no big deal because you can do 26.22 miles
in less than half the time on a motorcycle.

Point is, for your own personal use, you just go out and buy a radio.
Yet you put down the salesfolk of 20+ years ago for not knowing some
arcane bit of info about the innards of the set.

Does it work any better because you know it has a 3 loop PLL?

Do you find that without honor?

Nope.

Without any worth?

Nope. You got paid, I presume?

Why do you?

Why do you presuppose my answer?

And why do you make fun of others' work and accomplishments, yet
expect honor for your own?

"Do as Len says, not as Len does".

The main point is simple: Hams did not need synthesizers to stay in their
bands and subbands. Nor do they need 1 Hz or even 10 Hz accuracy on HF.

In Jimmie's world, yes. :-)

Why is such accuracy needed by hams, Len?

It must be right across the border from nursieworld. :-)

Tsk. Some "runner." Takes up one phrase and runs and runs and
runs trying to prove another is unworthy in his presence. :-)

Tsk. Those runs could be cured with some kaopectate...

Well, now we know where *your* mind is at, Len...

So there's only one logical thing for me to do:

In article ,
(N2EY) writes:

(Avery Fineman)(so desperate to get past spam filters
that he changes screen names)wrote in message
...
In article ,

(N2EY) writes:

In an ideal superheterodyne, all the oscillators would generate pure,
steady
injection signals. In reality, there is always some imperfections in those
oscillator signals. In modern frequency synthesizers, particularly PLL
types,
the imperfection takes the form of noise sidebands on the oscillator
signal.

Technically wrong. DDS is more susceptible to spur generation and
phase noise than Fractional-N and Fractional-N is more susceptible
to that than PLLs.

Tsk. You haven't spent much time with a spectrum analyzer...

Sure have. You can nitpick over the minor points but the main thing is
correct: Frequency synthesizers do not produce perfectly clean LO
signals, and that phase noise in the LO causes performance degradation
in HF ham gear.

Didn't that "phase noise" bother those recycled radios using
vacuum tubes? :-)

Or do you only recycle crystal sets?


Tsk. Simplistic untruth.

No, it's true. You just don't understand the point.

I should have included a clarifying phrase in the above, but I thought
the average technically knoweldgeable reader would understand the
point anyway.

Oh, my, aren't you royals Talking Down to the proletariat!

Difficult to discuss the subject of "US Licensing Restructuring"
in the presence of such nobility. :-)

The clarifying phrase is:

"Even with an ideal receiver front end"

meaning that even if IMD and IP3 aren't causing problems, phase noise
*alone* can cause the apparent noise floor to rise if there are strong
adjacent-channel signals.

Note how, in lab tests, there is sometimes the annotation "noise
limited" when certain tests are made. What do you think that term
means?

Heh heh heh...I'm sure you will eventually get around to showing
that...and that on-off keying telegraphy MUST be tested for in
order to operate in ham HF bands...with or without "recycled
parts" raddios.

So...was all this "phase noise" invisible way back in the
1990 time? It didn't exist? It only came up when a frequency
synthesizer was incorporated? :-)


R70s were made 1982-84 (approximately), so the design is at least 23
years old (1981). You frequenctly denigrate others as "behind the
times", yet the R70 is the newest/most modern piece of HF radio
equipment you mention owning. Just another example of "do as Len says,
not as Len does".

That little Icom R-70 still works fine, as advertised. I've got one.
You don't. :-)

The only thing I "recycled" was some paper to get one in working
order. :-)

"Phase noise" wasn't a big buzzword then. It has a three-loop
PLL in it plus a microcontroller. Sensitivity is still good and
comparable with any contemporary HF receiver.

Have you ever used the receiver he mentions?

R-390? Yes. R-391 (which he didn't mention)? Yes. R-388?
Yes. A Collins 74 or 75 something or other owned by Ed Dodds,
(W6AFU?) long ago. A KWM2? Yes.

I have an Icom R-70. You don't. :-)


No, completely relevant. One important measure of amateur equipment
quality is how it performs in actual on-air operation.

Duhhhhh. :-)


Who decides what is "real sport"? You're not the IOC. Or TAC ;-)

I thought YOU were one of the Ruling Elite on What Is What
in amateur radio? You and all the elite PCTA extras...


The term "road race" is not limited to motor vehicles. It's
understandable that you don't like sports.

Tsk. Your "sport" here is trying to establish a world-record in
sarcastic conclusion-jumping!

I like and used to enjoy (as a participant) certain sports such as
international football (you may know it as "soccer").

I've yet to get close to the concept of sitting around a shack
making as many contacts as possible in a given time as any
"sport." Neither is that activity "pioneering the ariwaves" nor
any sort of "training for emergencies" to reasonable-thinking
human beans.

Like chess or checkers or board games, radio contesting is
a GAME.

It is FAR from an ATHLETIC sport.


Not the same as being there. It seems you enjoy only second-hand
experiences.

Tsk. You've never been in the military, certainly not in military
radio communications, yet you consistently put down what I
experienced in military HF radio communications. You "know"
about it?


The above story is true. The ham involved (actually an ex-ham; he no
longer shows up in the database) behaved exactly as described. He
probably went on to a career in electronics in some capacity or other.
And as I said, most of his ideas were pretty good - he just never
carried them to completion or even to partial implementation. At least
he held a ham license for a while - you haven't even done that.

Heh heh heh...back to the "Sermon on the Antenna Mount" thing.

You still claim over-riding expertise in radio design from what?
Recycling parts in your shack? Building Elecraft kits? A double
degree way back when? RADIO INDUSTRY experience?

Yahhhh...to be "knowledgeable in radio" requires a radio amateur
license?!?!?

You *do* sound just like him, Len. Lots of words and lots of put-downs
and lots of theory. But in terms of actual radios built on your own
time, with your own resources, from your own design....nada. Zip.
Zilch. Zero. Nothing. Not that anyone here knows about in all your
years and petabytes of posting.

If I had extra copies, I could, with a year or so off to do it, digitize
those things and put them on a website that allowed at least 100
MB user space. That includes corporate documents (public)
along with photographs. Not worth it, since the typical PCTA
extra "commentary" (to use a word very loosely) would be
totally derogatory. My little text and photo memorabilia on the
ADA assignment takes 6 MB in PDF.

YOU have REJECTED simple things like a digitized license
repro in the past. You would be expected to reject anything I
present...as "credentials" or whatever real proof there is...and
there is a lot of it.

I even looked through the online database of ham radio magazine
articles. You had 24 "bylines" in ham radio from 1977 to 1982 (even
though ham radio magazine was in operation a lot longer than that).
Most of them were in the 1977-79 time frame (20 bylines). Not one
"build this radio!" article - lots of commentary, some theory, lots of
basic stuff on digital logic theory.

Last mention was over 22 years ago...

Yes. I did it then. Even got paid for it!

I have an Icom R-70. You don't. :-)

You talk about "independent thought". Designing and building a ham
station with only one's available personal resources requires a lot of
independent thought - and action. It also explodes the myth of
amateurs as simple consumers of manufactured products.

Right. All hams do the "recycle" thing. :-)

Tsk. I lost interest in DXing in "radio sports" and the wallpaper
collection of QSLs after working at station ADA long ago.

To each his own. Why do you denigrate what others find as fun? What is
wrong with live and let live?

A federal REGULATION requiring morse code testing in order
to get an AMATEUR license to operate on HF is NOT
"live and let live."

Became a professional in the radio-electronics industry, got regular
money for not only designing, but building and testing, following
through in the field, etc., etc., on many projects.

Completely different game. You sound like someone saying the Tour de
France is no big deal because you did the same route in a car in less
time. Or that a marathon is no big deal because you can do 26.22 miles
in less than half the time on a motorcycle.

Lower your lance, Armstrong. This is NOT about athletic sports
or motorcycling.

Point is, for your own personal use, you just go out and buy a radio.
Yet you put down the salesfolk of 20+ years ago for not knowing some
arcane bit of info about the innards of the set.

"Arcane?" :-)

I put down ANY salesfolk that want to give me a snowjob about a
product they are selling or - in this case - just NOT KNOWING
ENOUGH - about an expensive product.

Does it work any better because you know it has a 3 loop PLL?

No. It works better BECAUSE it has that 3-loop PLL.

I could explain the reasons it does so, but you will dismiss it
as "arcane" and Kellie will think it is all "bafflegab" (because
he is not up to speed on control theory). Davie will snarl and
start babbling about his mini-radio-museum and "you should
SEE this Orion!" :-)

Oh, yeah, the gunnery nurse will probably jump in and talk
about "healthcare credentials" and call everyone "Putz."


Well, now we know where *your* mind is at, Len...

You aren't even close. But, if it pleases you to "recycle" some
imagination and fantasies, you will NOT do "nothing" as you
signed off.

PAMNO (N2EY) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(Len Over 21) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:

.. . . . . . .

What you *did* claim was that you could operate within 200 Hz of a band edge
and know you were inside, using certain '50s/60s vintage equipment. Which is e
a reasonable claim for the equipment involved.

btw, back in 1975 or so I designed and built a "digital dial". The way it
worked was that it used TTL 74192 presettable up-down counters to count the
tunable oscillator. You'd adjust dip switches for the offset and direction of
each band and mode. Its time base was a 400 kHz xtal, easily zeroed to within a
few Hz of WWV. The thing normally read out in 100 Hz increments but could be
switched to 10 Hz or 1 Hz. Its accuracy was dependent on how well you set the
time base and presets. Could be used with almost any rig. Hooked it up to a
75S3 and got an A in the course.

Lab course at Penn?

And yes, you could easily reset it to 100 Hz.
10 Hz took a steady hand.

Later I saw a better design. It sampled and counted all the oscillators in a
rig, and displayed the total. No presets to adjust - set the timebase to WWV
and you're done. Could go to 1 Hz if you were willing to have it update once
per second.

Neat! (no, I'm not willing to wait a second for the nummers to come up
.. . ! )
. . . . .

electrical QRN noise floor on the band under consideration. Which is
easy enough to check. Welome to the realities of "phase noise "insofar
as amateur radio operation is concerned" Sweetums.

Sort of.

Close enough for an M.E.?

referring to the number of decibels
below the "carrier" (center frequency reference, not a modulated
carrier per se). The "crud" (as you term it) is quite far down in
relative power and certainly won't affect morse code reception of an
on-off keyed station's carrier.

Wrong. Incorrect. Not true at all in the real world of HF radio.

Len has just demonstrated, once more, that he just doesn't get it.

You expected anything else??
.. . . .

decade on cellular telephony techniques has been enormous
worldwide. It's only natural that industry advertisements, from sub-
system components to full systems, emphasize a low "phase noise."

Has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is HF amateur radio.

Spank.


As far as on-off keyed radiotelegraphy, your mention of "phase noise"
as being "crud" in synthesizer frequency control is akin to making
a big case for gold-plated music system speaker wires. :-)

Wrong again, Len.

What a goofball . . .

responses...one of the papers I wrote at RCA was on quick
identification of such possible spurs (not the first, but it was a
very quick way to determine them).

Misses the point completely.

Spank.

Here's what *really* happens:

In an ideal superheterodyne, all the oscillators would generate pure, steady
injection signals. In reality, there is always some imperfections in those
oscillator signals. In modern frequency synthesizers, particularly PLL types,
the imperfection takes the form of noise sidebands on the oscillator signal.

Wait a minnit, if there are sideband signals on the LO output the
inference seems to be that the carrier is being modulated. By
something. What something?

Now even first-generation designs had noise sidebands many dB below the desired
LO signal. Someone who doesn't really understand the situation might react as
Len does, saying that such low-level noise can't have any real effect on receiving the desired signal . . . snip . . . And he won't
hear the low-power limited-antenna less-than-a-microvolt stations he's trying to work. All the Inrads and DSP in the catalogs won't do
any good in such a situation.

That's why phase noise is important to hams.

Huh: I learned a bit from this post. Which is what USENET usta be all
about . .

smaller increments...:-)...but I also have to play to the common
denominator of technical expertise in here.

1 Hz is common in modern manufactured amateur equipment. But that's not really
the issue.

Of course it isn't. This sort of overkill ticks me off, it's BS tossed
out by the advertising geniuses to reel in the no-clues and
overcomplicates the equipment for the rest of us.

increments Sweetums, the best you can do with the thing is tune it to
the nearest 100 Hz increment yes? Of course you silly old thing. I've
never seen an R-70 in the flesh so tell me, are those actually Nixies
in the display for God's sake?!

R-70 is a pretty good receiver.

OK, the R-70 "happened" during my radio hiatus and went past me so I
poked around the Web for info on it. Looks like it is a decent
performer. Problem is that at this point it's OLD, it comes out of the
same generation of equipment as the TS-930/940 did both of which now
suffer well-known aging/reliability problems. I've had more than my
share of those with the 940 so I wouldn't give an R-70 the desk space
if somebody gave me one gratis. If Sweetum's R-70 is still ticking
along without problems good for him.

Almost qualifies as a boatanchor now....

Hang classic tags on it.

Turns out Icom has a neat 3-loop PLL arrangment, doesn't
go into DDS or Fractional-N at all. Minimal phase noise and no
discernable "crud" anywhere within full tuning range.

How many points did Len get with it in the last CQWW? Or even the last SS or
Field Day?

Or in RRAP.

Okay, so your spiffy-schmiffy 1 Hz resolution "xcver" is "guarnateed"
accurate because it has a "digital dial?" I don't think so.

Nobody claimed that it was accurate. It *is* precise, however. Big difference.

Spank.

Exact 1 Hz
settings imply 100 PPB (Parts Per Billion) accuracy of the master
reference oscillator.

Yo Sweetums: I did a refresh on the 847 specs, the thing can display a
freq to 0.10 Hz resolution. Apologies for tossing out bad info. Heh.

Let's see - 1 part per million is 10 Hz at 10 MHz. Or 1000 parts per billion.
So 100 parts per billion is 1 Hz at 10 MHz.

You will NOT be able to hold such accuracy
and be believable to anyone who has worked to such accuracies in
crystal oscillators. Certainly not for the ham consumer market.

Nobody is claiming that kind of *accuracy*. Only that kind of *precision*.

"He can wriggle, he can squirn . . . "

Of course there's an easy and quick check of all this. Just tune in WWV and see
what the fancy digidial says when you zero beat the carrier in SSB mode. That
will tell you how accurate the reference oscillator is. Traceable directly to
NIST via the F2 layer. If you're at all careful you can get to the point where
the S meter needle is slowly fluctuating as the frequency/phase difference
wanders...

Is there anybody who knows what's up who *doesn't* do that
periodically??

I rather prefer what I've been exposed to since 1963 on frequency
control methods...

Still living in the past...

That's all he has left. Not counting Burke.

said. Like, I could ask you "how's the zeta of your control loop"
and you would be out to lunch, cussing and hollering "bafflegab!"

No Sweetums, not at all, that's not the way I work. You're being silly
again. If by any chance I ran into an arcane topic like that in which
I had any interest whatsoever I'd ask an EE to uncurl it for me.

Engineering 101: Don't reinvent the wheel. They even taught us EEs that one.

He's a breed I'm quite (unfortunately) familiar with: the old time
military aerospace out-in-the-shop bench tech types. Doesn't matter
what narrow fields they worked in, oleo struts, control surface
actuators, flight control electronics, radar, comms electronics, pilot
relief piping, their syndromes are all the same. They had these little
niches in which they beavered away on their little piece of the
overall much bigger job or project or whatever it was. Eventually,
because of their complete immersion in their niches, they come to the
conclusion that it all would come apart save for their "expertise" and
anybody who isn't particularly up to speed on the nits and grits of
whatever they were buried in are unworthy no-clue clods. Sweetums is a
perfect example of these windbags.

So along comes somebody like myself, a fish-out-of-water mechanical
engineeer in this group who readily concedes non-expertise in topics
like circuit design and even worse from his twisted perspective has no
interest at all in doing any "synthesizer development" sorts of things
so he bores in on me with his bafflegab. Which highlights at least two
of his fundamental deficits: (A) He's mentally incapable of conceding
a lack of "technical expertise" on any subject involving radio,
particularly ham radio and (B) He's equally incapable of understanding
why professionals like thee and me feed each others' expertise and
work together to get from here to there and *don't* reinvent wheels.

Time for a radio story...

Back in high school I knew a local ham down Collingdale way who was always
working on a pet project. Same age as me, saw him in school every day. Had all
kinds of grand ideas of how he was going to build the next generation
state-of-the-art ham rig. All solid-state, full features, all bands, all modes,
etc.

Now this kid was no dummy and his ideas were basically very sound. But he
didn't have anywhere near the resources or practical experience to actually
finish anything. He'd draw all kinds of schematics, spin all kinds of yarns and
sometimes even gather some parts. But build a working rig? Never happened. Not
once. When he *did* get on the air, it was with borrowed equipment that he
conned some local ham into lending him "temporarily". Until said local ham had
to come over and take it back. I made the mistake of loaning the kid a QST,
which I never saw again. I learned fast.

Meanwhile, those of us willing to make do with less than "SOTA" were on the air
and having fun and QSOs while he pontificated.

That was about 35 years ago but the lesson is still valid: All this bafflegab
doesn't make one QSO.

For some reason I was reminded of him. He sounded just like Len..

A gooder for certain.

SPAAAAAANK!

Now take a break from your bafflegabbery Sweetums and let's play in my
field of professional expertise this time. Demonstrate your level of
technical competence by solving a very real-world electronics design
problem. Assume that you have a one inch diameter x 1/16 inch wall x
eight foot long 6061T651 aluminum tube fully restrained at one end
with the other and dangling horizontally in the wind. Calculate the
maximum wind speed which will not produce permanent deformation of the
tube.

That's easy! Would take me about sixty seconds to get the answer.

Maybe. I can't do it in sixty seconds at the moment, I dropped my
slide rule again and have to realign it before I do the speed run so
QRX . . . .

We both know Sweetums won't touch it with a ten foot pole even though
it's a sophmoric simple exercise. He doesn't know where to even start
to approach the problem let alone solve it so he'll diss it as
irrelevant. Typical and completely predictable sub-professional
defensive behavior.

One can spend two lifetimes diddling frequency synthesizers and such
but if whatever freq pops out of his gem doesn't make it to the
airwaves via an engineered radiator and it's support structure one
might as well have been a lifeguard in the Mohave desert.

73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv

(Brian Kelly) wrote in message . com...
PAMNO (N2EY) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:
(Len Over 21) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:
. . . . . . .
What you *did* claim was that you could operate within 200 Hz of a band edge
and know you were inside, using certain '50s/60s vintage equipment. Which
is a reasonable claim for the equipment involved.

btw, back in 1975 or so I designed and built a "digital dial". The way it
worked was that it used TTL 74192 presettable up-down counters to count the
tunable oscillator. You'd adjust dip switches for the offset and direction of
each band and mode. Its time base was a 400 kHz xtal, easily zeroed to
within a
few Hz of WWV. The thing normally read out in 100 Hz increments but could be
switched to 10 Hz or 1 Hz. Its accuracy was dependent on how well you set
the
time base and presets. Could be used with almost any rig. Hooked it up to a
75S3 and got an A in the course.

Lab course at Penn?

Independent design project. Made the circuit boards meself and all.
Still have it, still works. Don't use it much though, because one
thing I learned in the process was that I prefer an analog dial for
most purposes. Just a personal preference. Which is one of the big
reasons to homebrew - you get to indulge personal preferences.

And yes, you could easily reset it to 100 Hz.
10 Hz took a steady hand.

But it could be done with a Collins.

Later I saw a better design. It sampled and counted all the oscillators in a
rig, and displayed the total. No presets to adjust - set the timebase to WWV
and you're done. Could go to 1 Hz if you were willing to have it update once
per second.

Neat! (no, I'm not willing to wait a second for the nummers to come up
. . ! )

The 74192 and other TTL family chips were hot stuff 30 years ago when
I was doing that project. You can still get pin-compatible parts
today.
. . . . .
electrical QRN noise floor on the band under consideration. Which is
easy enough to check. Welome to the realities of "phase noise "insofar
as amateur radio operation is concerned" Sweetums.

Sort of.

Close enough for an M.E.?

See below for the big issue.

referring to the number of decibels
below the "carrier" (center frequency reference, not a modulated
carrier per se). The "crud" (as you term it) is quite far down in
relative power and certainly won't affect morse code reception of an
on-off keyed station's carrier.

Wrong. Incorrect. Not true at all in the real world of HF radio.

Len has just demonstrated, once more, that he just doesn't get it.

You expected anything else??
. . . .

Not really.

decade on cellular telephony techniques has been enormous
worldwide. It's only natural that industry advertisements, from sub-
system components to full systems, emphasize a low "phase noise."

Has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is HF amateur radio.

Spank.

As far as on-off keyed radiotelegraphy, your mention of "phase noise"
as being "crud" in synthesizer frequency control is akin to making
a big case for gold-plated music system speaker wires. :-)

Wrong again, Len.

What a goofball . . .

The audiophile *market* is full of pseudotechnology - driven by the
fact that there's $$ involved. But there's also some good stuff too,
driven by folks who like *music*.

I like music.

responses...one of the papers I wrote at RCA was on quick
identification of such possible spurs (not the first, but it was a
very quick way to determine them).

Misses the point completely.

Spank.

Here's what *really* happens:

In an ideal superheterodyne, all the oscillators would generate pure, steady
injection signals. In reality, there is always some imperfections in those
oscillator signals. In modern frequency synthesizers, particularly PLL
types,
the imperfection takes the form of noise sidebands on the oscillator signal.

Wait a minnit, if there are sideband signals on the LO output the
inference seems to be that the carrier is being modulated.

That's exactly what's going on.

By something. What something?

All kinds of somethings. Here's just one:

In a PLL synthesizer, the VCO control voltage may wander a bit for a
variety of reasons. Say you have a design where a voltage swing of 5
volts causes the VCO to move 5 MHz. *Any* variation in that control
voltage, from *any* source, will cause the VCO frequency to wander a
bit. 1 millivolt variation gives a shift of 1000 Hz, 1 *microvolt* of
variation gives 1 Hz, etc. Remember that the control voltage is a DC
signal and the rest is obvious.

That's just one source of phase noise.

Now even first-generation designs had noise sidebands many dB below the desired
LO signal. Someone who doesn't really understand the situation might react as
Len does, saying that such low-level noise can't have any real effect on receiving the desired signal . . . snip . . . And he won't
hear the low-power limited-antenna less-than-a-microvolt stations he's trying to work. All the Inrads and DSP in the catalogs won't do
any good in such a situation.

That's why phase noise is important to hams.

Huh: I learned a bit from this post.

I hope so!

The upshot of all of it is that in real-world hamming, we often have
to deal with bands full of strong signals, yet we want to hear the
weak ones.

I've run into more than a few hams who say they "hate contests because
they make the bands so noisy". What's really going on, in at least
some cases, is that the effects of so many strong signals on the air
all at once raise the apparent noise floor of their *modern*
transceivers, in part due to phase-noisy oscillators in the
contest-haters equipment.

Which is what USENET usta be all about . .

smaller increments...:-)...but I also have to play to the common
denominator of technical expertise in here.

1 Hz is common in modern manufactured amateur equipment. But that's not really
the issue.

Of course it isn't. This sort of overkill ticks me off, it's BS tossed
out by the advertising geniuses to reel in the no-clues and
overcomplicates the equipment for the rest of us.

The issue is that some specifications are much more important than
others. And that getting the signal on the air is the goal...

increments Sweetums, the best you can do with the thing is tune it to
the nearest 100 Hz increment yes? Of course you silly old thing. I've
never seen an R-70 in the flesh so tell me, are those actually Nixies
in the display for God's sake?!

R-70 is a pretty good receiver.

OK, the R-70 "happened" during my radio hiatus and went past me so I
poked around the Web for info on it. Looks like it is a decent
performer. Problem is that at this point it's OLD, it comes out of the
same generation of equipment as the TS-930/940 did both of which now
suffer well-known aging/reliability problems. I've had more than my
share of those with the 940 so I wouldn't give an R-70 the desk space
if somebody gave me one gratis. If Sweetum's R-70 is still ticking
along without problems good for him.

Almost qualifies as a boatanchor now....

Hang classic tags on it.

One of the problems with older solidstate equipment is that much of it
used custom parts for which the only sources are the manufacturer (if
they still support the unit) or junker units. If there was a weak
spot, finding a junker with a usable part maybe hopeless. The Kenwood
TS-440s reputedly has this problem in its display.

Turns out Icom has a neat 3-loop PLL arrangment, doesn't
go into DDS or Fractional-N at all. Minimal phase noise and no
discernable "crud" anywhere within full tuning range.

How many points did Len get with it in the last CQWW? Or even the last SS or
Field Day?

Or in RRAP.

Okay, so your spiffy-schmiffy 1 Hz resolution "xcver" is "guarnateed"
accurate because it has a "digital dial?" I don't think so.

Nobody claimed that it was accurate. It *is* precise, however. Big difference.

Spank.

Exact 1 Hz
settings imply 100 PPB (Parts Per Billion) accuracy of the master
reference oscillator.

Yo Sweetums: I did a refresh on the 847 specs, the thing can display a
freq to 0.10 Hz resolution. Apologies for tossing out bad info. Heh.

Precise but not necessarily accurate.

Let's see - 1 part per million is 10 Hz at 10 MHz. Or 1000 parts per billion.
So 100 parts per billion is 1 Hz at 10 MHz.

You will NOT be able to hold such accuracy
and be believable to anyone who has worked to such accuracies in
crystal oscillators. Certainly not for the ham consumer market.

Nobody is claiming that kind of *accuracy*. Only that kind of *precision*.

"He can wriggle, he can squirn . . . "

...."says to push on"..

Of course there's an easy and quick check of all this. Just tune in WWV and see
what the fancy digidial says when you zero beat the carrier in SSB mode. That
will tell you how accurate the reference oscillator is. Traceable directly to
NIST via the F2 layer. If you're at all careful you can get to the point where
the S meter needle is slowly fluctuating as the frequency/phase difference
wanders...

Is there anybody who knows what's up who *doesn't* do that
periodically??

I rather prefer what I've been exposed to since 1963 on frequency
control methods...

Still living in the past...

That's all he has left. Not counting Burke.

said. Like, I could ask you "how's the zeta of your control loop"
and you would be out to lunch, cussing and hollering "bafflegab!"

No Sweetums, not at all, that's not the way I work. You're being silly
again. If by any chance I ran into an arcane topic like that in which
I had any interest whatsoever I'd ask an EE to uncurl it for me.

Engineering 101: Don't reinvent the wheel. They even taught us EEs that one.

He's a breed I'm quite (unfortunately) familiar with: the old time
military aerospace out-in-the-shop bench tech types. Doesn't matter
what narrow fields they worked in, oleo struts, control surface
actuators, flight control electronics, radar, comms electronics, pilot
relief piping, their syndromes are all the same. They had these little
niches in which they beavered away on their little piece of the
overall much bigger job or project or whatever it was. Eventually,
because of their complete immersion in their niches, they come to the
conclusion that it all would come apart save for their "expertise" and
anybody who isn't particularly up to speed on the nits and grits of
whatever they were buried in are unworthy no-clue clods. Sweetums is a
perfect example of these windbags.

So along comes somebody like myself, a fish-out-of-water mechanical
engineeer in this group who readily concedes non-expertise in topics
like circuit design and even worse from his twisted perspective has no
interest at all in doing any "synthesizer development" sorts of things
so he bores in on me with his bafflegab. Which highlights at least two
of his fundamental deficits: (A) He's mentally incapable of conceding
a lack of "technical expertise" on any subject involving radio,
particularly ham radio and (B) He's equally incapable of understanding
why professionals like thee and me feed each others' expertise and
work together to get from here to there and *don't* reinvent wheels.

Just like my friend from high school:

Time for a radio story...

Back in high school I knew a local ham down Collingdale way who was always
working on a pet project. Same age as me, saw him in school every day. Had all
kinds of grand ideas of how he was going to build the next generation
state-of-the-art ham rig. All solid-state, full features, all bands, all modes,
etc.

Now this kid was no dummy and his ideas were basically very sound. But he
didn't have anywhere near the resources or practical experience to actually
finish anything. He'd draw all kinds of schematics, spin all kinds of yarns and
sometimes even gather some parts. But build a working rig? Never happened. Not
once. When he *did* get on the air, it was with borrowed equipment that he
conned some local ham into lending him "temporarily". Until said local ham had
to come over and take it back. I made the mistake of loaning the kid a QST,
which I never saw again. I learned fast.

Meanwhile, those of us willing to make do with less than "SOTA" were on the air
and having fun and QSOs while he pontificated.

That was about 35 years ago but the lesson is still valid: All this bafflegab
doesn't make one QSO.

For some reason I was reminded of him. He sounded just like Len..

A gooder for certain.

SPAAAAAANK!

Now take a break from your bafflegabbery Sweetums and let's play in my
field of professional expertise this time. Demonstrate your level of
technical competence by solving a very real-world electronics design
problem. Assume that you have a one inch diameter x 1/16 inch wall x
eight foot long 6061T651 aluminum tube fully restrained at one end
with the other and dangling horizontally in the wind. Calculate the
maximum wind speed which will not produce permanent deformation of the
tube.

That's easy! Would take me about sixty seconds to get the answer.

Maybe. I can't do it in sixty seconds at the moment, I dropped my
slide rule again and have to realign it before I do the speed run so
QRX . . . .

We both know Sweetums won't touch it with a ten foot pole even though
it's a sophmoric simple exercise. He doesn't know where to even start
to approach the problem let alone solve it so he'll diss it as
irrelevant. Typical and completely predictable sub-professional
defensive behavior.

One can spend two lifetimes diddling frequency synthesizers and such
but if whatever freq pops out of his gem doesn't make it to the
airwaves via an engineered radiator and it's support structure one
might as well have been a lifeguard in the Mohave desert.

And THAT'S the game!

73 de Jim, N2EY


btw - the way I'd solve the problem would be to email you for the
solution.

In article ,
(N2EY) writes:

(Brian Kelly) wrote in message
.com...
PAMNO (N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:
(Len Over 21) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:
. . . . . . .
What you *did* claim was that you could operate within 200 Hz of a band
edge
and know you were inside, using certain '50s/60s vintage equipment. Which

is a reasonable claim for the equipment involved.

btw, back in 1975 or so I designed and built a "digital dial". The way it
worked was that it used TTL 74192 presettable up-down counters to count
the
tunable oscillator. You'd adjust dip switches for the offset and
direction of
each band and mode. Its time base was a 400 kHz xtal, easily zeroed to
within a
few Hz of WWV. The thing normally read out in 100 Hz increments but could
be
switched to 10 Hz or 1 Hz. Its accuracy was dependent on how well you set

the
time base and presets. Could be used with almost any rig. Hooked it up to
a
75S3 and got an A in the course.

Lab course at Penn?

Independent design project. Made the circuit boards meself and all.
Still have it, still works. Don't use it much though, because one
thing I learned in the process was that I prefer an analog dial for
most purposes. Just a personal preference. Which is one of the big
reasons to homebrew - you get to indulge personal preferences.

The "160" and "190" series ICs appeared some time prior to
1973 since their full data is included in the hard-bound Texas
Instruments "The TTL Data Book" that I have from RCA days
(courtesy of distributor R.V. Weatherford).

There were a number of applications notes by several semi-
conductor makers on various ways to use those two families
of 8 separate function types. I admit to not retaining many of
those...most went to paper recycling long ago. Memory serves
that several frequency counters, including up-down counting
types did appear back then.

The even numbered ones of the 8 were decade counters, the
odd numbered ones 4-bit binary (maximum 16 count). The
decade counter types are now either dropped from production
(Philips, Fairchild) or marked "not for new designs" (ON Semi,
ST). That includes all the upgraded performance families such
as 74LS, 74S, 74ALS, 74AC, 74ACT, 74F, 74HC, 74HCT.
The only up-down counters available for decade counting now
are either surplus stock at a few vendors or in old, slow CD4000
series maxiing at about 4 MHz tops at 5 VDC.

To do top-of-the-HF band programmable dividers for a PLL today
requires the 4-bit binary '191 which can safely count to about
45 MHz with a 74AC191 and using the terminal count gated with
clock pulse low state as the assynchronous parallel load for
presets carrying the divider control input. Preset input has to be
binary so any conversion from BCD has to be separate (either
hardware with slow-speed adders or through an embedded micro-
controller).

If all that is wanted is digital readout from an existing analog
frequency control subsystem, the microcontroller-based frequency
meter marketed by AADE can't be beat...and Neil offers a TCXO
crystal option for absolute minimum drift (both can be "beat" with
WWV). The microcontroller itself (a 16F71 from Microchip's PIC
series) is the counter (up to 40 MHz maximum) and the internal
PIC programming handles the conversion from binary to decimal
plus the translation to ASCII and scanning for an LCD readout.
Ingenious way of making a frequency meter without any separate
IC counter packages...devised by a non-ham Brit about 10 years
ago.


The 74192 and other TTL family chips were hot stuff 30 years ago when
I was doing that project. You can still get pin-compatible parts
today.

At best, without going to the surplus stock vendors (one is located
in Beverly Hills, CA, of all places), Jameco offers the 74HC192 and
74HC193 at reasonable prices. Unknown how long that will last
since the 74HC192 is not in production.

"30 years ago" would make it 1974. At that time there were a
number of application notes on counter uses. "pre-design"
designs that anyone could copy.

The '192 and '193 have the distinguishing characteristic of separate
up/down count inputs and separate up/down terminal count outputs.
Made it convenient for the input (least-significant bit or decade) from
different count sources. The bad part was that the TC (Terminal
Count) was active on the clock pulse low state; that does not offer
a long enough recovery time prior to the next positive-going clock
edge to do high-rate programmable counting. Programmable up-
down dividers of higher rates should use the '190 or '191.

All of that is important when there's a "recyclable update" for that
"impressive to all visitors" Southgate Type 7 with "inventions" of
adding semiconductor IC technology.

Hello? Something about "not re-inventing the wheel?" :-)

The audiophile *market* is full of pseudotechnology - driven by the
fact that there's $$ involved. But there's also some good stuff too,
driven by folks who like *music*.

I like music.

Tsk. Why do you insist that all test their musicology by testing
for monotonic, aperiodic beeps that are a representation of the
written word?


I've run into more than a few hams who say they "hate contests because
they make the bands so noisy". What's really going on, in at least
some cases, is that the effects of so many strong signals on the air
all at once raise the apparent noise floor of their *modern*
transceivers, in part due to phase-noisy oscillators in the
contest-haters equipment.

So...you hate the contest haters all on account of "phase noise?"

Tsk. You ought to get used to the fact that not everyone likes
contests for the simple reason that they are contests, organized
by contestant-wannabes so that they can Win and show off that
they are "better" than the non-contestants. :-)


One of the problems with older solidstate equipment is that much of it
used custom parts for which the only sources are the manufacturer (if
they still support the unit) or junker units. If there was a weak
spot, finding a junker with a usable part maybe hopeless. The Kenwood
TS-440s reputedly has this problem in its display.

So...you think vacuum tubes will be with you always? :-)

Of course...you can "recycle" them...somewhat after their useful
life...and "impress all who visit your shack."

Tsk.

(N2EY) wrote in message . com...
(Brian Kelly) wrote in message . com...
PAMNO (N2EY) wrote in message ...

switched to 10 Hz or 1 Hz. Its accuracy was dependent on how well you set
the
time base and presets. Could be used with almost any rig. Hooked it up to a
75S3

I'll bet I know where the S3 came from . . .

and got an A in the course.

Lab course at Penn?

Independent design project.

.._.


Made the circuit boards meself and all.

Lotta jollies there if yer into such things. I "burned" a number of
homebrewed circuit boards, late '60s? Something like that. Making PCBs
then was basically a drafting and photographic process which
"integrated"nicely into my darkroom "assets" so I went at it a few
times. Translate the circuit diagram in QST to a physical layout for
openers. Yeah, they can draw circuits which show conductors leaping
over other conductors without shorting them but that don't work on
single-sided boards dammit! Which all homebrewers could do then. Dunno
how you did yours but there were complete PCB "kits" available from
Kass and Radio Shack when I did mine.

They provided sheets of transfers with "donuts" for wire and component
connections and IC pinouts all of which were layed out on a
transparent film. Then ya *very carefully* connected all the dots with
thin tape to make the conductor traces. Tedious. Net result was a 1:1
photograhic negative of the circuit. From there it went into the
darkroom where the negative was positioned over a piece of sensitized
board stock and exposed, developed, neutralized and washed just like
all photos are developed even today. I did a few boards which I
sensitzed myself.

The rest was easy. Drill all the holes, trim the board to size and
stuff it with the components. Then go back and solder-patch all the
busted traces! Hee!

I guess I did ten boards all told. Three keyers, one a monster K3JH
developed which was first large-capacity memory keyer, several
stripline SWR bridges, a vacuum relay QSK TR switch, etc. I think I
showed you some of those "works of art" before I dumstered all that
old crap. I have a yen now to build a couple more widgets using
homebrewed PCBs but so far I have not been able to find the board
stock or chemicals in hobby quantities.


and you're done. Could go to 1 Hz if you were willing to have it update once
per second.

Neat! (no, I'm not willing to wait a second for the nummers to come up
. . ! )

The 74192 and other TTL family chips were hot stuff 30 years ago when
I was doing that project. You can still get pin-compatible parts
today.

I fed the aformentioned dumpster a *shoebox* full of those old 7400
series chips . . .


Wait a minnit, if there are sideband signals on the LO output the
inference seems to be that the carrier is being modulated.

That's exactly what's going on.

By something. What something?

All kinds of somethings. Here's just one:

In a PLL synthesizer, the VCO control voltage may wander a bit for a
variety of reasons. Say you have a design where a voltage swing of 5
volts causes the VCO to move 5 MHz. *Any* variation in that control
voltage, from *any* source, will cause the VCO frequency to wander a
bit. 1 millivolt variation gives a shift of 1000 Hz, 1 *microvolt* of
variation gives 1 Hz, etc. Remember that the control voltage is a DC
signal and the rest is obvious.

Not quite. I gotta chase down the links Dave supplied and keep
digging.

That's just one source of phase noise.

OK

That's why phase noise is important to hams.

Huh: I learned a bit from this post.

I hope so!

The upshot of all of it is that in real-world hamming, we often have
to deal with bands full of strong signals, yet we want to hear the
weak ones.

That leaves Sweetums and his half-vast "experience" out. Long-haul
military HF comms are channelized and if a station is weak they just
twist the Variac clockwise. 40kW with rhombics just to push RTTY from
Tokyo to the west coast . . SPARE me . . !


I've run into more than a few hams who say they "hate contests because
they make the bands so noisy". What's really going on, in at least
some cases, is that the effects of so many strong signals on the air
all at once raise the apparent noise floor of their *modern*
transceivers, in part due to phase-noisy oscillators in the
contest-haters equipment.

"If ya can't take the heat go up the band!"

One can spend two lifetimes diddling frequency synthesizers and such
but if whatever freq pops out of his gem doesn't make it to the
airwaves via an engineered radiator and it's support structure one
might as well have been a lifeguard in the Mohave desert.

And THAT'S the game!

73 de Jim, N2EY


btw - the way I'd solve the problem would be to email you for the
solution.

.. . . boink . . POINT!

It's no big deal at all. As far as the "math" goes any kid who has a
decent grip on 9th grade alegebra can hoof thru it, this is not double
integral or tensor analysis country. All one needs to pull it together
is the material physical properties and the ability to jiggle a few
simple algebraic equations which are only a half-step beyond jiggling
Ohm's Law. All of it is readily available out on the Web and it can
all be done with a pencil and a calculator.

Typical materials info source:

http://www.matweb.com/SpecificMateri...&group=General

Here's a taste of the number-crunching:

http://hsc.csu.edu.au/engineering_st...ng_stress.html

For my own part I've gotten into semi-automating the whole process in
order to design widgets like tapered aluminum yagi elememts,
fiberglass quad (squalo?) spreaders, masts and towers. I run a LISP
rountine in Autocad to come up with the cross-sectional properties
then diddle the rest in Excel or Mathcad or a slick little $50
shareware program called "DTbeam" which is a finite elememt analysis
beam analyzer. The M.E.'s version of a Java-based Smith Chart solver.
Sort of.

http://www.dtware.com/

w3rv

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message

Wrong. Incorrect. Not true at all in the real world of HF radio.

Len has just demonstrated, once more, that he just doesn't get it.

You expected anything else??

"Real world of HF radio?" The one that goes from 3 MHz to 30 MHz?

Amateur activity is concerned only with a fraction of that.

Amateur licenses aren't legal for out-of-amateur band transmission
even if one has a four-on-the-floor extra license.


Has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is HF amateur radio.

Spank.

Kellie has a spanking fetish?

The SUBJECT AT HAND is "US Licensing Restructuring ??? When ???

Look at the subject line in the message header.

Try to get your subject threads in a row, ducks.


As far as on-off keyed radiotelegraphy, your mention of "phase noise"
as being "crud" in synthesizer frequency control is akin to making
a big case for gold-plated music system speaker wires. :-)

Wrong again, Len.

What a goofball . . .

Kellie has Monster Cable speaker wires installed? Tsk. No wonder
he be angry at anyone slighting Monster Cable products. :-)


responses...one of the papers I wrote at RCA was on quick
identification of such possible spurs (not the first, but it was a
very quick way to determine them).

Misses the point completely.

Spank.

Tsk. More of the spanking fetish. :-)


Wait a minnit, if there are sideband signals on the LO output the
inference seems to be that the carrier is being modulated. By
something. What something?

You're an extra and you don't know? :-)

Tsk.


That's why phase noise is important to hams.

Huh: I learned a bit from this post. Which is what USENET usta be all
about . .

Tsk. Mighty macho morsemen extras shoulda known this.

Where was all the noise about phase noise BEFORE the
cellular equipment expansion? There were oscillators around
then, even PLL frequency control systems.

Phase noise was NOT an important buzzword then. Now it is,
coincidental with the cell phone equipment and component
makers using it in their advertisements.

Conclusion: Too many hams get their "technical expertise"
by memorizing advertisement copy instead of theory texts.


1 Hz is common in modern manufactured amateur equipment. But that's not
really the issue.

Of course it isn't. This sort of overkill ticks me off, it's BS tossed
out by the advertising geniuses to reel in the no-clues and
overcomplicates the equipment for the rest of us.

...like the use of the Big Buzzword "phase noise." Hi hi.

increments Sweetums, the best you can do with the thing is tune it to
the nearest 100 Hz increment yes? Of course you silly old thing. I've
never seen an R-70 in the flesh so tell me, are those actually Nixies
in the display for God's sake?!

R-70 is a pretty good receiver.

OK, the R-70 "happened" during my radio hiatus and went past me so I
poked around the Web for info on it. Looks like it is a decent
performer. Problem is that at this point it's OLD, it comes out of the
same generation of equipment as the TS-930/940 did both of which now
suffer well-known aging/reliability problems. I've had more than my
share of those with the 940 so I wouldn't give an R-70 the desk space
if somebody gave me one gratis. If Sweetum's R-70 is still ticking
along without problems good for him.

Tsk. If an NCTA has an R-70, Kellie calls it "a piece of crap."

Leo has an R-70 which is not a "piece of crap" either...but Leo
isn't a PCTA extra (Canadian ham rules don't have "extras" but
I'm sure they have their share of mighty macho morsemen).

Collins radios for the amateur radio market are OLD.

Almost qualifies as a boatanchor now....

Hang classic tags on it.

No tags required. Just dust it off once in a while. Still works as
specified when purchased new.

Turns out Icom has a neat 3-loop PLL arrangment, doesn't
go into DDS or Fractional-N at all. Minimal phase noise and no
discernable "crud" anywhere within full tuning range.

How many points did Len get with it in the last CQWW? Or even the last SS
or Field Day?

Or in RRAP.

Tsk. Jimmie and Kellie avoid answering or discussing. Misdirection
is all they can do...but that is traditional in Usenet since before it was
split from the ARPANET. Saw it then, still see it now...all the
self-professed "experts" making like renowned gurus, dissing and
cussing anyone who disagrees with their immortal words.

Okay, so your spiffy-schmiffy 1 Hz resolution "xcver" is "guarnateed"
accurate because it has a "digital dial?" I don't think so.

Nobody claimed that it was accurate. It *is* precise, however. Big
difference.

Spank.

Kellie been watching Spanky McFarland on the late-night oldies on
TV? :-)


Yo Sweetums: I did a refresh on the 847 specs, the thing can display a
freq to 0.10 Hz resolution. Apologies for tossing out bad info. Heh.

Display is NOT the same as ACCURACY.

Didn't they teach you that in Mechanical Engineering courses on
phase-lock loops? :-)


Nobody is claiming that kind of *accuracy*. Only that kind of *precision*.

"He can wriggle, he can squirn . . . "

Kellie still think display resolution is the same as ACCURACY?


Is there anybody who knows what's up who *doesn't* do that
periodically??

How often Kellie do the WWV beat thing?

When he came back from "hiatus?" After the assignment to
shoot bears for navel intelligence?

I rather prefer what I've been exposed to since 1963 on frequency
control methods...

Still living in the past...

That's all he has left. Not counting Burke.

Awwww. You are beginning to sound like Jim Kehler...of the old days
before prostateitis hit him bad. Tsk, tsk. Get well soon.

I've accumulated frequency control design engineering experience
for 31 years now, along with a lot of other disciplines. I'm sure that
you will call all of that "more crap" and "bafflegab." :-)

said. Like, I could ask you "how's the zeta of your control loop"
and you would be out to lunch, cussing and hollering "bafflegab!"

No Sweetums, not at all, that's not the way I work. You're being silly
again. If by any chance I ran into an arcane topic like that in which
I had any interest whatsoever I'd ask an EE to uncurl it for me.

Engineering 101: Don't reinvent the wheel. They even taught us EEs that
one.

Tsk. PCTA extras would only ask another PCTA for technical help.
They don't recognize any NCTA as having any technical cognizance.

He's a breed I'm quite (unfortunately) familiar with: the old time
military aerospace out-in-the-shop bench tech types.

Kellie have years and years of experience in aerospace bullpens?

Tsk. Not long ago he was snottily looking down on all those
who got paychecks from employers, later calling them "drudges."

Self-professed royalty, he was.

Doesn't matter
what narrow fields they worked in, oleo struts, control surface
actuators, flight control electronics, radar, comms electronics, pilot
relief piping, their syndromes are all the same.

I've never worked in, on, around "oleo struts, control surface
actuators, flight control electronics, or relief piping." :-)

I use oleomargarine on bread and rolls, sometimes on baked
potatoes. Is that permissible by Kellie without having a degree
in nutrition? :-)

However, I HAVE had experience in civilian and military radio
communications, radionavigation equipment (TACAN, DME, VOR,
Localizer, Glideslope), IFF transponders, radars (search, weather,
target acquisition and tracking), earlier air-to-air missle systems
(principally the first Hughes Aircraft GARs 1 through 4), and the
strange McDonnel decoy drone that could imitate formations of
B-52s to Russky radar...using a TWT as a broadband mixer
covering many octaves.

None of that involved important work (according to Kellie) on
Relief Piping! (I am sooooo deficient in my resume...:-)

They had these little
niches in which they beavered away on their little piece of the
overall much bigger job or project or whatever it was. Eventually,
because of their complete immersion in their niches, they come to the
conclusion that it all would come apart save for their "expertise" and
anybody who isn't particularly up to speed on the nits and grits of
whatever they were buried in are unworthy no-clue clods.

Poor baby. Got confused by BASIC ELEMENTS of control loops?

Still think that control loops basic item descriptions are "nits and
grits" of minutae? Tsk.

"Zeta" is the common-use symbol for Damping Factor (as earlier
instructors wanted to call it). That's found in all control loop/system
textbooks. It determines the response in time of any such loop as
well as extremes of it resulting in things like "servo hunting" were
a servo will never settle down, always dithering (not at all good for
things like control surface coupling on aircraft or missles).

Response time figures into all control loops whether those involve
receiver AGC or PLLs. [the less cognizant want to characterize
"time constant" of AGC systems because that is "understandable"
without going into control system theory...but it is still a control
loop to hold gain more constant]

Sweetums is a
perfect example of these windbags.

"Windbags?" :-)

So along comes somebody like myself, a fish-out-of-water mechanical
engineeer in this group who readily concedes non-expertise in topics
like circuit design and even worse from his twisted perspective has no
interest at all in doing any "synthesizer development" sorts of things
so he bores in on me with his bafflegab.

Kellie is the fish out of water who wants to diss and cuss the
fisherman with his dying breath. Tsk.

Kellie calls basic control system items as "bafflegab."

He should have stuck with "important niche work" in relief piping.

Which highlights at least two
of his fundamental deficits: (A) He's mentally incapable of conceding
a lack of "technical expertise" on any subject involving radio,
particularly ham radio and (B) He's equally incapable of understanding
why professionals like thee and me feed each others' expertise and
work together to get from here to there and *don't* reinvent wheels.

Tsk. Kellie wants to retain the artificial arrogance of the PCTA
extra in many areas. Such as denigrating 1980s commercial
communication receiver products as "piece of crap." Such as
denouncing basic control system items/principles as "bafflegab."
Such as dismissing all who work for an employer as "drones"
or "drudges" incapable of going out on their own.

Tsk. You and Jimmie, "two expert professionals" in the field
of "radio communication" can go right ahead and reinvent all
your morsemanship wheels and make every newcomer to ham
radio keep the morse wheels revolving to the spin of the mighty
macho morsemen of the pre-WW2 times.

Old wheels still go around in circles...whether they "recycle"
OLD parts or not (which is a euphemism for "reinventing the
wheel" as it was done in decades past).


For some reason I was reminded of him. He sounded just like Len..

A gooder for certain.

SPAAAAAANK!

Spanky McKelly ought to readjust his paddles.


We both know Sweetums won't touch it with a ten foot pole even though
it's a sophmoric simple exercise. He doesn't know where to even start
to approach the problem let alone solve it so he'll diss it as
irrelevant. Typical and completely predictable sub-professional
defensive behavior.

Tsk. Sort of like Kellie and Jimmie's hot-loaded "questions" and
"challenges" which are strangely similar to the defensive mis-
directs of all the PCTA extras in here. :-)

Kellie and Jimmie want "my scores from the last Field Day" as
one loaded "challenge." :-) Not all amateurs participate in
"Field Day" and no non-amateur-licensee can possibly operate
legally. An example of a NON-challenge, already-known answer
disguised as a sort-of (sort off, really) "civil discourse" question.

One can spend two lifetimes diddling frequency synthesizers and such
but if whatever freq pops out of his gem doesn't make it to the
airwaves via an engineered radiator and it's support structure one
might as well have been a lifeguard in the Mohave desert.

Tsk. Ever hear of China Lake? It's the Naval Weapons Station
Test Center in the middle Mojave desert. It had a doozy of an
antenna test range...for battleships and smaller...scale metal
models, of course, on a huge turntable...enabled scale testing of
HF antenna patterns on various ships.

There are three actual, water-filled lakes in the Mojave. Don't know
if they have lifeguards there, though. :-) [manmade] There's at
least one swimming pool at the Edwards AFB Flight Test Center
complex in the northern Mojave. Haven't been in that but I suppose
there's a "regulation" life guard on duty when it is open. I've only
been on the Edwards flight line, some shops, some offices there.

Sad to say for Kellie's Windbag Denigration, some of my work did
indeed fly as actual hardware...including from Kern County Airport
#7 at the northern end of the Mojave. "Mojave International" as it
is jokingly known in local aerospace circles is also the home of
Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's company which got in the news
lately with the first flight (for prize purposes) of SpaceShipOne.

Kellie, best get your water wings on if you want to come out to
where the aerospace action is in the USA. Call ahead and you
can ask for a lifeguard on duty. You will need it more than your
windbaggery substitute for water wings. :-)

Len Over 21 wrote:

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message

Wrong. Incorrect. Not true at all in the real world of HF radio.

Len has just demonstrated, once more, that he just doesn't get it.

You expected anything else??

"Real world of HF radio?" The one that goes from 3 MHz to 30 MHz?

Amateur activity is concerned only with a fraction of that.

That's right. That portion of the radio spectrum used by radio
amateurs.
That's the portion of the spectrum of concern to those in this
newsgroup.

Amateur licenses aren't legal for out-of-amateur band transmission
even if one has a four-on-the-floor extra license.

Right again. We all knew that. It hasn't bothered us in the least.

Has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is HF amateur radio.

Spank.

Kellie has a spanking fetish?

The SUBJECT AT HAND is "US Licensing Restructuring ??? When ???

Look at the subject line in the message header.

Try to get your subject threads in a row, ducks.

Wouldn't you just love to know the last date on which you commented on
the topic in that header? Shall I google it up for you?

As far as on-off keyed radiotelegraphy, your mention of "phase noise"
as being "crud" in synthesizer frequency control is akin to making
a big case for gold-plated music system speaker wires. :-)

Wrong again, Len.

What a goofball . . .

Where was all the noise about phase noise BEFORE the
cellular equipment expansion? There were oscillators around
then, even PLL frequency control systems.

You didn't read about it; therefore, it could not have taken place.
Izzat about it?

Phase noise was NOT an important buzzword then. Now it is,
coincidental with the cell phone equipment and component
makers using it in their advertisements.

Your facts are wrong.

Conclusion: Too many hams get their "technical expertise"
by memorizing advertisement copy instead of theory texts.

And if your facts are wrong, you end up with a wrong conclusion.


How many points did Len get with it in the last CQWW? Or even the last SS
or Field Day?

Or in RRAP.

Tsk. Jimmie and Kellie avoid answering or discussing. Misdirection
is all they can do...but that is traditional in Usenet since before it was
split from the ARPANET. Saw it then, still see it now...all the
self-professed "experts" making like renowned gurus, dissing and
cussing anyone who disagrees with their immortal words.

I dunno, Len...That sounds an awfully lot like you.


However, I HAVE had experience in civilian and military radio
communications, radionavigation equipment (TACAN, DME, VOR,
Localizer, Glideslope), IFF transponders, radars (search, weather,
target acquisition and tracking), earlier air-to-air missle systems
(principally the first Hughes Aircraft GARs 1 through 4), and the
strange McDonnel decoy drone that could imitate formations of
B-52s to Russky radar...using a TWT as a broadband mixer
covering many octaves.

You just had to get him started again, eh Brian?


Sweetums is a
perfect example of these windbags.

"Windbags?" :-)

That pretty well sums it up.


Kellie and Jimmie want "my scores from the last Field Day" as
one loaded "challenge." :-) Not all amateurs participate in
"Field Day" and no non-amateur-licensee can possibly operate
legally. An example of a NON-challenge, already-known answer
disguised as a sort-of (sort off, really) "civil discourse" question.

No non-amateur-licensee can possibly operate legally on Field Day? I'd
think you'd get one right once in a great while, Leonard. That response
would be wrong.

Dave K8MN