New TX set up

  • Hi Phil,


    Glad to hear it works. Welcome the club :) Now as you mentioned you have to think about TX side. Don't be affraid you will make it. For any thing ask on the forum here are planty of hams whit experience how to do it. Also if you are a member of your local club check if there is somebody with experience in microwaves and can give you a lot of support making cables, connectors, good advices etc.


    Looking forward to hear you calling CQ one day over the QO-100 :)


    73 Andrej - s57rw!

  • HB9SKA

    Changed the title of the thread from “New RX set up” to “New TX set up”.
  • Hi Phil,


    Pluto will work and you can use it also for receiving at the same time. One thing you should know about Pluto as it comes out of the box its local oscilator isn't that stable for narrow band modes. It is not that it is completly useless and for start will do but with time gets a bit annoying your correspondents have to adjust the frequency for your drift. Inside the house when it warms up is stable enough for SSB but you will most probably like to put all the stuff outside close to the dish to avoid long coax cable runs. Of course there is a solution you can change the TXCO with a more stable one but involves soldering a very tiny SMD component. If you are not comfortable with that find a friend who has experience with soldering SMDs to do it for you. Than you will need 2 stages of amplification to get few watts out, an dish illuminator and you are ready to go. Most of this stuff are commercially available and quite plug and play :)


    Personally don't have the Lime so cannot tell about. Maybe some others here who are using it can. But as have red it has some drift problems as well with original TXCO.


    You can check this channel on Youtube from M0DQW, he has a series of videos about making the setup and he tried both with a Pluto and Lime. https://www.youtube.com/c/TechMindsOfficial/videos


    In the case you have a 2m and/or 70cm SSB rig you can consider using an upconverter instead of the SDR.


    73 de Andrej - s57rw!