Do not worry! I am only in to a dummy load and sniffing into my Spectrum analyzer at present, still some time from going to air.
I have been playing with my Hackrf generating a 1000K SR DATV test signal.
This is my line up at present
Hackrf, to RF2126 amp to MHL21336 Amp through 2.4GHz filter to 30 dB coupler and dummy load with the sample port to the spectrum analyzer.
The line up:-
Everything for testing is from a 12 Volt PSU so the the RF2126 amp has a DC converter down to 5 Volts and the MHL21336 has an DC buck to 26 Volts.
This is a spectrum display at present with 10 MHz per division Horizontal and 10 dB per div vertical, so I am looking at present with around 50 dB down on any spurious signals.
This is the same view but now at 2MHz per division.
I think I may be able to reduce the spikes there as they are the sample rate used on the Hackrf so I believe increasing it from 10 to 12Mhz may reduce the spikes to an even lower level.
I was trying to use this small amp stage after the Hackrf,
but, the frequency response is so wide that it amplifies any and all spurious outputs from the Hackrf and helps pass them to later stages so unless I build another ID filter, (Which I may well do!) then I will not use it in the line up.
But I still do not have anywhere near enough signal going this way to actually drive the main PA into any sort of power level.
I put the bisonelectronics amp on the output as it was for a test and was disappointed. The shoulders increased to at best -40 dB at worst -35 dB below peak signal.
A 1000SR test signal
A simple test shows that the amp has around 20dB increase
But we are still taking less than 1 Watt!
That is a far as I got tonight playing with it all across the bench I need advice on how to proceed and what are realistic figures I should be expecting on shoulders, yes i have seen some saying -35 dB down are OK and some saying that is not good enough?
Is anyone using a bisonelectronics amp as the final stage and how does it perform and what drive level do you need to get to?
Adrian