XF-9 S42 9Mhz AM filter from the Telrad board.

On previous post I made a simple crystal tester, that was needed because I was short on 9Mhz crystals and thought that a good place to get them would be the AM filter from the Telrad board. It's referenced as XF-9 S42, 3.6KHz at 3db bandwidth with 560 Ohm impedance.

I was right, there are plenty of them now available, either for USB and LSB:

 

Inside, the PCB supporting the crystals

 The schematics is more or less like this:

 Interesting, the input goes to the middle of a crystal, first time I see it.

 Another view

 Side view

 It was not that easy to open the box

 The input details, see the terminal going to the middle of the crystal

 The cover, underside and top side.

 The matching numbers to be tested:

 The values

It was not easy to open the filter, I used the "sardine can" method, previously had tried to unsolder the bottom but there was to much thermal mass and still not sure if it would possible.



So, now I have 9Mhz  crystals for the BFO of the boards and for other projects, one of them already take place in the S9 signal generator.

Have a nice week!


 

Quick crystal tester

Needed a quick crystal tester, could had lash it up in a little piece of pcb but decided to give it a more robust look and leave it a bit more permanent case is needed again.
Circuit is out of ordinary/common ones and probably will not work with all crystals but for the intended ones it worked, if you replicate you might need a small 20pF cap in parallel with collector and emitter of the transistor, mine worked without.

Here's the outcome testing a crystal:

The counter is a pre-build module with VFD display, couldn't managed to take a decent picture of the display even with a better camera, I was not born to be a photographer...

The terminal connected to the battery was a left over from the exploded battery on the previous post, so some cents were saved.

Schematic:

output waveform:

Some more crystals in testing:

And more pictures:

Have a nice weekend!

The exploding battery!

Nothing built in the this blog post, instead some destruction!

In Ireland it's common to have in all divisions of a house smoke detectors, I think this is by legislation and mostly because there's a lot of wood involved in construction.
In Portugal, for example, that is not common since most of the houses are cement build and not mandatory.

Any how, on the present house I'm living one of the smoke detectors started beeping, that's an indication about battery status, the detectors use standard 9V PP3 battery for power.

I replaced the battery for a new one, checked the old one and since it's was still showing near the normal value keep it to power some electronics.
In this case I used it to power the S9 signal generator that was siting in the edge of the bench as seen on this picture (except in vertical position):

One of this days, while working at the bench eared a loud bang, initially since the FT-707 is on top of his power supply I tough that it had slipped sideways.... further investigation and saw the battery hanging free on the edge besides the S9 generator, OK it could had slipped hit the bench but does not justify the loud bang similar to a hammer hitting a wood bench....

 Here's what happened in pictures:

 imagine the pressure to crack the plastic.

 and force it outside the cover

 yups, the battery had long passed the time it should be running.

 The front post also suffered and was removed and used, as battery clip, for a project since this ones are easy to solder on the inside. The S9 generator uses one clip from another dead battery.

Bellow the elements inside:

There's is noticeable degradation....

Anyhow, destruction without personal damage is always fun!

Have a nice Sunday!

S9 signal generator, update

Just updated the S9 signal generator project, placed a 9Mhz crystal that was previously removed to another project, one of the attenuators is now switched so I can have a high/low option and a rudimentary holder for the battery was added.

It's like this now:

 The battery holder it's just a zip tie but makes it much easier to move around the desk without the loose connection. Besides that, it's simple, cheap and effective.

The switch (in blue) for one of the attenuator pad's in-line with the output.

and the "old"/initial version:

Have a good day!

Test Hook Clip Probe

Have to make some troubleshooting on a tight and crowded PCB so decided to make an appropriate probe.

The hook clips are very small, not extra quality but so far in the initial testing they worked OK.

With the BNC to spring clip adapter on the other end I can easily change between the scope input, the signal generator or even the multimeter without removing the in circuit probe.

Here's the outcome:

...looking at the online prices for something similar it would be cheaper than with the individual components as I did. In any case I  had the components laying around from shoppings.

The only interesting part is soldering and fit in place

That is; pulling he top cap, passing the wire and soldering on the tab bellow (close to the bottom). the top tab will be a strain relief, I left without crossing and crimping over the cable.

Have fun!






 

New "Telrad" board with filters

New, as another one, I got recently.

This one looks sightly different in terms of components, basically some caps for decoupling an it has some IC's in socket so at least it will be easy to recover them.

The board is this one:

PCB revision is the same as the other (62-211-2600).

Since some components are missing I will probably use it just for getting the filters.

For ther Telrad board I have and about the filters in it you can see here and here in the test jig.

Have a nice week!