[minima] Re: minima Digest V2 #50
- From: "Mac A. Cody" <maccody@xxxxxxx>
- To: minima@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2015 21:43:10 -0500
On 06/04/2015 08:17 AM, Kevin Borgnis wrote:
Also, the official page for the minima seems to be this one:
http://www.phonestack.com/farhan/minima.html
Mac Cody, AE5PH, started writing a build and test guide, but it hasn't
been updated in over a year. That may be because of the discussion
that were surrounding improvements to the mixer. However, if the new
design by Ashar pans out, maybe AE5PH will update his build guide with
the new schematic.
Guide: https://sites.google.com/site/ae5phradionotebook/minima_main_page
Well, it has been a few days since this was posted and I've had some time
to think of a response. Here goes...
There are several reasons why my build and test guide has not been updated:
1) General burn-out on building testing tools and not really building and
testing the Minima. It seems to take as much, if not more, effort to put
together an adequate set of testing tools than actually building the radio.
Since I am not an RF designer, I have had to do a lot of searching and some
second-guessing to attempt to figure out what tools are adequate, can be
hand-built, and don't cost too much. My goal has been to make it possible
for anyone with a reasonable set of electronic construction and test skills
to follow my instructions and build a Minima. It had become very tedious
for me to keep building test tools and not make any progress on the Minima
itself.
2) Abandonment of the Minima 1.0 design in favor of the, now obsolete,
Minima
2.0 design. When I saw Farhan's recent post "something fresh - a long
post",
I thought to myself "Oh boy, here we go again...". Granted, the new Minima
(3.0?) design is somewhat closer to the original Minima design, but I am
reluctant to change my Minima Mainboard PCB radically to support it. I'm
reluctant to jump on the bandwagon again. Once bitten, twice shy. What I
was striving to build was a Minima 1.1, based upon the "J-KISS 3.0" mixer,
shown at the bottom of the "UnRealistic Minima" web page found on the HF
Signals web site
(
http://www.hfsignals.org/index.php/UnRealistic_Minima), and
the recommended changes found on the "Essential Modifications Errata & Notes
(
http://www.hfsignals.org/index.php/Essential_Modifications_Errata_%26_Notes).
Given the improved performance of the "J-KISS 3.0" mixer, I was
surprised that
it wasn't adopted. Then again, what do I know. I'm not an RF designer.
3) My available free time got diverted to other hobby and work interests.
This all being said, I have assembled the Minima bidamp and it is ready for
testing. Some time back, I constructed a variation on the KK5NA
Accuprobe that
uses the Minima Radiono board to measure probe voltage and report RF
power in
dBm. I hope that it will be adequate to testing (at least) relative power
levels for testing the amplifier and crystal filters. Now I just need
to find
the time (and a bit more desire).
73s,
Mac / AE5PH
Other related posts:
