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I got my initial experience just experimenting with different designs from
the ARRL Handbook, hobby radios in some of the electronics magazines, etc. I had 20 years experience as an electronics repair technician. In 1992, I decided to get an Associates degree in Electronics Technology at Triton College, in River Grove, Illinois. One of the classes I took over there was a speech class, so I decided to give a dissertation about radio systems. The first radio was nothing but an elaborate version of a crystal radio, except I used an op-amp with diodes in the feedback loop to have a low level precision rectifier. It worked well, but I wanted more, so I gave my friend Dean Woodman, NB9Z a call. I can't tell you how many 2:00 in the morning phone calls I had with him concerning design problems. He was my greatest mentor, but unfortunately, he died in a fire about 4 years ago when some gang bangers burned his house down. Very sad story. Anyway, I asked him how hard it would be to design a receiver that would have the system gain like a Collins 651S-1. He said "it's easy.............just use a couple of MC1350 I.F. ampliers, with a good mixer ahead of the system". After that, I designed my first I.F. subsystem with these devices, but still, I had to devise and AGC system. After trying numerous designs, I eventually came up with one of my own, using a couple of op-amps. Next, came the mixer...........my first mixer used a single diode with a resistive summing network. I never saw this design published, but I thought I would give it a try. I worked out pretty well, but I decided to give Mini-Circuits a try. I discovered that company in a Nuts and Volts advertisement. The SRA-3 mixer worked out pretty well, so well, in fact, that I decided to make a dual conversion receiver. I used ceramic filters from old broken CB radios, along with their crystal filters. At this time, I didn't know how to design synthesizers, so I used a good signal generator as the 1st LO. I used a conventional Colpitts design as the 2nd LO, running it a 5mW into another diode ring mixer. The results were encouraging. A year went by, and I graduated with my degree. As luck would have it, Rockwell-Collins had an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune for circuit board designers. It is pretty funny...........a week before that ad showed up I was telling my wife that Collins Radio Company would be a place for my dream job. This turned out to be a very good move; there were extensive training classes on printed circuit board design, not only for signal integrity but also from the EMC standpoint. An example is when routing digital lines, using microstrip of the characteristic impedance of the digital devices. For instance, CMOS families have a typical impedance of 70 to 90 ohms. By following these guidelines, it is possible to design a radio that doesn't have digital hash getting into the RF portion of the system. Another thing I discovered when working over there was the concept of "filament growth", whereby if two PCB traces are too close together and there is a certain potential, a filiment of metal can grow between the traces and short them out. This mechanism can also occur throught layers of FR4 material because the substrate has a certain amount of porosity. Continuing on, Mini-Circuits came out with the POS-XX series of VCOs, so I thought why not give them a try. I still didn't know anything about synthesizers yet, so I devised a circuit that used a 10-turn pot as the tuning element. I used three op-amps to develop the V_Tune for the low end of the pot and the V+X_Tune voltage for the high end of the pot. By using a string of metal film resistors and switching them at different points along the voltage divider for the V_Tune voltage I was able to have a bandswitched tuning system that tuned in 3MHz sub-bands to cover from 0 to 30MHz. After this design was completed, I met Gary Pershin, also of Rockwell-Collins. You may have seen his homebrew designs mentioned on rec.radio.homebrew. He said "Pete, why don't we design a synthesizer?" I told him that I didn't know how to do that, so he came up with a design that used an MC145152 parallel programmable system. I didn't want to use DIP switches to tune the radio, so I came up with a sequencer design that used an optical encoder to send a string of pulses to an array of 74190 counter chips. Gary came up with a good implementation to set the Asynchrous inputs of the counters to have a default startup frequency of 10MHz. Using an XOR gate, he came up with a good way to eliminate the tuning error when changing tuning directions with the Quadrature optical encoder. He called me one evening and said "Pete, I have acquired synthesis!" We had our first synthesized receiver! After I was at Rockwell-Collins for 2 years, I transferred to the Synthesizer Group, where I took extensive in-house classes about filter design, receiver design, and synthesizer design. These were graduate level classes given by some of the best folks in the industry, so I am grateful for this. When I was in the Synthesizer Group, I worked with some of the noted experts in the industry, so once again, I had the benefit of their years of experience. The next design I came up with was a unit that used a Philips TDA1572 chip as the I.F. subsystem. This is the design that I had up on my website for awhile, after getting clearance from Rockwell-Collins to make the design public. In the year 2000, my wife really got homesick for Chicago, so we moved back to our hometown and I took a job with Motorola, working with spread spectrum technology. I knew this wasn't the job for me, so I left Motorola and took a job driving a cab for several months; this allowed me to regroup. In June of 2003, I took a job with my present employer, and have been there ever since. I do want to branch out and start my own company.............this seems the way to go. I have so many products that I would like to market that would be beneficial to the SWL community. The reason that I got interested in receiver design in the first place was because I got tired of the overpriced, compromised design offerings that were on the market. That is the biggest reason I set up my radio design website............I wanted to share my designs for the world so they wouldn't have to go through all the years of "paying the dues" and doing all of the research. It was a fun thing. So, on a final note..............................I only have a 2-year degree in Electronics, and 90% of my knowledge comes from on the job training, in-house design classes, and experience. When I finished my education at Triton College, I gave my favorite professor, Niel Volk, a super-duper MW receiver that had a tracking front end and a Mechanical Filter in the I.F. strip. When he said "Pete, I just don't know what to say", I said "oh, just tell me that this is a cool radio and that you will enjoy it". Anyway, I hope this gives you a little bit of an idea of who I am and what I am about! Pete "starman" wrote in message ... Pete KE9OA wrote: I've already got a good MW design done..........if my employer will only finish it up and put it on the market. snipped Pete, I've been curious about your technical background, particularly your formal education. Where did you learn the subject matter which you implement so well with radio receivers? Thanks ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
Thanks for the great reply Pete. You are doing some extraordinary work
considering that you started with a two year degree. It shows that good mentoring and job training are just as important as formal education. I went to a four year college for electrical engineering but you obviously know more about receiver design than I do. Of course when I was in college integrated circuits were almost a new technology. :-) "starman" wrote in message Pete, I've been curious about your technical background, particularly your formal education. Where did you learn the subject matter which you implement so well with radio receivers? Thanks ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
Thanks, Mr. Starman.....................anytime you have any questions about
receiver design, synthesizer design, etc...........feel free to give me a shout. That's the cool thing about knowledge.............it's free to share. I have a philosophy.......it's not "look what I can do", but it is "look what you can do too!" Keep tuned! Pete "starman" wrote in message ... Thanks for the great reply Pete. You are doing some extraordinary work considering that you started with a two year degree. It shows that good mentoring and job training are just as important as formal education. I went to a four year college for electrical engineering but you obviously know more about receiver design than I do. Of course when I was in college integrated circuits were almost a new technology. :-) "starman" wrote in message Pete, I've been curious about your technical background, particularly your formal education. Where did you learn the subject matter which you implement so well with radio receivers? Thanks ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
Build me a Redifusion (Radio) that will from right here,West side of
Jackson,Mississippi U.S.A. that will pick up Monticello,Mississippi U.S.A.in the daytime real good and good good without any fadeing in or out,without any external hookup antenna and you have got a Winner.Build that,I will pick up my phone and hand you my debit card number.I don't use credit cards. www.forthepeople.org/radiostations.htm cuhulin |
I am not sure how far that is, or what frequency this station is on, but
typically, stations from 200 miles are possible. If propagation permits, you will be able to hear any signal that is out there. I am working on the new synthesizer for the radio right now, and I may be able to figure out how to use the on-board oscillator of the TDA1572 with a crystal resonator. These new changes will reduce the parts count of the radio by around 30 parts. It may sound silly, but the fewer components there are, the fewer components will fail. I remember the first time I looked into a 75A-4 receiver and thought to myself "where are all the parts?" Right now, I am looking into aluminum extrusions for the chassis, similar to what Lowe and AOR use in their receivers. It's got to look as cool as it works. If I can easily come up with a way to switch filters, I would also like to have a wide and narrow I.F. bandwidth. Hittite makes some good RF switches that might do the trick. The other way would be to use PIN diodes with bias chokes, decoupling caps, and bias resistors. The Hittite devices have better isolation and don't require these external support components. Mini-Circuits was nice enough to send me a couple of samples of their POS-25 VCOs. These are really nice........they have internal tracking filters, and I believe that the phase noise is around the -112dBc mark.............a PLL circuit will clean this up further. If I can achieve a final phase noise of around -120dBc, I will be happy. Pete wrote in message ... Build me a Redifusion (Radio) that will from right here,West side of Jackson,Mississippi U.S.A. that will pick up Monticello,Mississippi U.S.A.in the daytime real good and good good without any fadeing in or out,without any external hookup antenna and you have got a Winner.Build that,I will pick up my phone and hand you my debit card number.I don't use credit cards. www.forthepeople.org/radiostations.htm cuhulin |
I went through College,sort of.Back in 1972-1973,I went to welding
school night classes at Raymond Junior College on the G.I.Bill in Raymond,Mississippi.That is eight miles or so Southwest of my doggys couch.Cute gals over there too :{) cuhulin |
Monticello,Mississippi,,, I am guessing is about 70 miles South of
Jackson,you can look it up in a Rand McNally Road Atlas if you want to.It is a low power radio station,I think,because I can not pick it up in the day time even with my best radio I own.And a certain one of my old Radio's is a damn good one too.I know a guy who lives in Monticello with his wife and family,back around 1973,I bought a 1919 Ford T Model chassis from him for $250.00.He restores Corvette cars to help keep the wolf away from the door,if y'all know what I mean. cuhulin |
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