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Depending on the DC output voltage from your power supply, you may find that the 11V regulator, U14, gets quite hot. Its worth adding a small heatsink (for example, a simple aluminium bracket to the chassis) to keep it cool.

Band Pass Filters

The band pass filter board performs a number of very useful functions in the QRP2004. On receive it reduces the amount of wideband noise reaching the mixer, and in particular it attenuates signals from bands below the required signal. This latter point is significant with the Tayloe product detector, because it passes sub-harmonics of the required signal frequency with rather less attenuation than we would ideally like. We measured about 45 - 50dB attenuation of the first sub-harmonic on one of the prototypes, and whilst the filters only improve this by a further 5 10dB, it all helps. On transmit the BPF cleans up the signal from the Tayloe product detector (which is being driven backwards) before it reaches the PA stage. This avoids wasting power amplifying signals which are then taken out by the final low-pass filter. More importantly, the Tayloe product detector is acting as a switch-mode mixer now, and there are some very fast edges on the output signal which might cause distortion and perhaps even instability if they were allowed to reach the PA. There are five separate filters on the BPF board, with an optional sixth filter for the 6m band. The 160m band is actually handled by a low pass filter, rather than a band pass arrangement. The 80m band has its own band pass filter, but higher HF bands have to share filters. The correct filter for the current operating frequency is automatically selected by the control board. Filter selection and power supply lines are all provided by the 16-way System Bus ribbon cable. Indeed, the System Bus is the only connection to the BPF board apart from the RF input and output signals, which are connected via coax, of course. The schematic is shown in Fig. 21, with the filters and filter switching at the centre of the diagram, and the PA driver and ALC circuit to the right.

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Fig. 21: BPF Circuit Diagram The low pass filter for 160m is a simple 5 element Chebyshev design, with 50 input and output impedances. The component values are taken directly from the tables towards the back of the ARRL Handbook a veritable goldmine of useful reference data and certainly much easier than calculating the values yourself! The five bandpass filters were modelled as a 3-pole Chebychev design using an Excel spreadsheet. Nominal terminating impedance is 50 and component values have been rounded to nearest standard values for those who would like to use standard value axial RF chokes instead of winding T37 toroids as we did. The lower Q of these chokes have little or no impact on insertion-loss of the filters. Since the filters only need to handle relatively small signals, we use solid-state CMOS switches to select the desired filter section. The switches we have adopted have a very low on resistance and handle up to 3V peak-to-peak signals with very low distortion, resulting in good IMD performance. There are really three other little circuits on the BPF board. The solitary relay, together with Q1 performs the necessary signal routing to support RX/TX switching. Q2 provides about 14dB of RF gain during transmit, to make sure that we have plenty of drive available for the PA stage. The remaining circuitry, consisting of Q3, Q4 and Q5 form the ALC circuit. Q3 starts to conduct when the forward or reflected power get above preset limits. This switches off Q5, which (in turn) starts FET Q4 conducting. Q4 shunts some of the output signal to ground, so restoring the RF output level to the desired value.

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One final thought on the BPF board before we move on to construction details: were eager to encourage others to experiment with the QRP2004, and improvements in the band pass filters could be particularly beneficial to overall performance. One of our prototypes was built with very narrow band-pass filters, which only covered the amateur bands. Unfortunately this restricts the rig to just six bands, and no general coverage receive option (without a major re-design). Another alternative is to stay with the current octave filter arrangement but to use more carefully optimised filters: in particular, filters with lower in-band loss but which still maintaining fairly steep skirts. To encourage experimentation, the BPF circuit diagram shows connections for an optional external preselector, which in a future firmware revision may be selected from the keypad. The authors would be particularly interested to hear from anyone who would like to try this.

BPF Construction and Testing

As with the other PCBs for the QRP2004, this is a double-sided board with one side acting as the ground plane. Before starting work on this board, drill a 4 5mm hole where the body of Q2 (BFR96) will be located: see the section on the mixer board for more details. As usual, fit any earth links first, and countersink other holes on the earth-plane side of the board unless that lead is intended to be connected to ground. There are some quite long links on this board to distribute the band select signals (2 links per band) out to the switch ICs: use insulated hook-up wire for these. As always, the component list, PCB layout, and component overlay diagram are available on our web site. Component layout on the BPF board is pretty compact, so take care over construction and build one filter at a time. Due to space constraints, use small ceramic disk capacitors for all of the filter sections. Although these are generally only available in quite broad tolerance ratings, we didnt find this to be a problem in practice. However, if you have access to a capacitance meter then it is probably worth hand selecting capacitors which are close to their nominal value. All of the filter coils are wound on small Amidon toroids using 24 SWG enamelled wire: Table 2 shows the core type and number of turns for each coil. Band 160m 80m 40m 30m & 20m 17m 10m 6m (option) Coil L6, L13 L3, L14 L2, L15 L4, L16 L5, L17 L7, L12 Type T37-2 T37-2 T37-6 T37-6 T37-6 T37-6 Turns 36 19 16 11 7 14 Coil N/A L8 L9 L11 L10 N/A Type 2xT37-2 stacked T37-2 T37-6 T37-6 Turns 26 26 22 16

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Table 2: Winding details for BPF coils In all cases the coil windings should be distributed evenly around approximately 80% of the circumference of the toroid. T1 consists of 2 x 10 turns of 28 SWG enamelled wire wound bifilar on an FT37-43 ferrite toroid. When you put it all together, your BPF board should look rather like Fig. 22. Youll see that we have used epoxy resin to hold the toroids in place, mainly for mechanical resilience. The switch ICs, being SMD parts, are out of sight on the other side of the board.

Fig. 22: BPF Layout After the usual visual checks, its time to try it out. At this point you need to make up the System Bus ribbon cable. Youll need a length of 16-way ribbon cable, and three 16-way IDC sockets. The only difficulty here is working out how long the cable needs to be, and this is easier after you have mounted the BPF board into its correct place on the outside of the left-hand face of the chassis. As with the control board, mounting is accomplished with M3 bolts and metal spacers, although shorter spacers are recommended here to avoid making the radio wider than it needs to be. Once the BFP board is in place, work out how you are going to arrange the ribbon cable to run from the BPF board, up across the top of the chassis, via the relevant 16-way connector on the control board, and then on again to the LPF board. Note that the LPF board is mounted on the opposite outside face of the chassis. Fig. 23 shows the cable which we made for one of our prototypes, whilst Fig 24 shows the complete prototype with the cable in place:

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Fig. 23: System Bus cable assembly

Fig. 24: System Bus cable fitted Fit the middle IDC socket in place for the control board connection. Ensure that the identifying stripe on the cable goes to pin 1 of the control board connector, and note that the cable needs to double back on itself at that connector. Leave plenty of ribbon cable either side for the BPF and LPF connections its better to be wasteful than have to remake the whole assembly if you find it doesnt quite reach! Plug the cable assembly on to the control board, and dress the ribbon cable towards the BPF board. Remember that the stripe on the cable needs to end up at pin 1 of the BPF connector. When you are happy with the cable layout fit the IDC socket for the BPF board, but be careful as these connectors are very difficult to move after they have been crimped onto the cable. Dont try to fit the LPF board connector yet leave that end of the ribbon cable unterminated for the moment. Double-check that pin 1 of the connector on the control board is connected to pin 1 of the connector on the LPF board. Then apply 12V to the control board ideally from a currentlimited PSU to reduce the risk of black smoke. A current limit of 300mA should be sufficient. Assuming that all is well, you now need to confirm that the filters and associated switching are working as expected. For the BFP board the only way to really check this is to measure the filter response for each filter in turn. At this point the board should be in RX mode, since there is nothing connected to the RX/TX control line yet. So connect an RF signal generator to the J1 coax connection point on the board, and monitor the RF signal level at the J4 connection point either with an RF probe or an oscilloscope. Set the displayed frequency to 1MHz from the keypad (press 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, #). Then sweep the signal generator from 1MHz up to about 3MHz, and watch for the point where the output voltage falls to half of its starting value this is the -6dB point on the filter curve.

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Select the next filter by setting a displayed frequency of 3MHz, and sweep the signal generator frequency either side of 3MHz looking for the upper and lower -6db points. Repeat this general sequence with displayed frequencies of 6MHz, 12MHz and 24MHz (also 52MHz if you have built the optional 6m filter). You should obtain a set of filter cut-off frequencies similar to those in Table 3, which shows the measured cut-off frequencies for one of our prototypes. Displayed Frequency 1MHz 3MHz 6MHz 12MHz 24MHz Nominal frequency response 0 2MHz 2 4MHz 4 8MHz 8 16MHz 16 32MHz Lower -6dB point N/A 1.9MHz 3.6MHz 7.8MHz 14.8MHz Upper -6dB point 2.3MHz 4.4MHz 8.2MHz 16.5MHz 30.9MHz

Table 3: Cut-off frequencies for prototype BPF board Although the exact cut-off frequencies are not critical, the aim is for each filter to cover the range shown in the table above without too much attenuation. However, priority has been given to avoiding significant attenuation in the amateur bands we tolerate higher attenuation at the extremes of each range to ensure that we get optimum rejection of unwanted frequencies. If you find that any of your filters show a response which is wildly different than expected, you may have a problem with the filter switching. Trace the filter selection signals through from the control board to ensure that the correct filter is being switched in. Even when the filter switching is working perfectly, we found from building the prototypes that some of the coils may need adjustment to get the desired filter responses. It would seem that toroid cores of (apparently) the same type from different sources can vary significantly in permeability up to 20% by our estimation. You can vary the inductance of these coils to some degree by spreading out or bunching up the windings, but occasionally you may find that you need to add or remove a winding from one or more coils to get the desired responses. There isnt much else on the BPF board which you can conveniently test at this point. You could put the radio into transmit mode, and check that you hear the BPF RX/TX relay activate, but in general further testing is best left until later. Set both of the preset potentiometers on the BPF board (which relate to the automatic level control circuitry) to their mid-point for the moment. Finally, connect J1 on the BPF board to the RF input/output connector of the mixer board with thin 50 coax. J2 and J3 are not used in this design: they are provided to support an optional external filter, but that is beyond the scope of this article. The other two RF connection points on the BPF board (J4 and J5) have to wait until the power amplifier and LPF boards are ready. Copyright 2004 - 2005 by QRP2004 Design Team Page 36

RF Power Amplifier
The little 5W (nominal) PA which weve adopted for the QRP2004 is heavily based on the excellent QRP-PA design from Peter Zenker, DL2FI. The original design is available as a very nice kit from Funkamateur in Germany (www.funkamateur.de), and if you have had enough of making your own PCBs by now, theres no reason why you couldnt use one of these kits for your QRP2004. However, for the truly die-hard homebrewer we have produced our own PCB layout, and introduced a few minor circuit changes along the way. Our circuit is shown in Fig. 25.

Fig. 25: PA Schematic The main difference from the QRP-PA design is our use of a monolithic voltage regulator to provide the bias voltages and perform RX/TX switching. The component count is very similar, but the regulator gives better isolation from supply-rail fluctuations. The topology is a pretty standard push-pull RF amplifier, and the symmetry helps to ensure a very clean output right up to the point where clipping sets in.

PA Construction and Testing

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If you decide to buy the kit from Funkamateur, then follow the detailed construction notes which are supplied with the kit. Otherwise, construction follows similar lines to other QRP2004 boards, except that most of the components are surface-mount types, and all components apart from the power transistors mount on the track side of the PCB. Since output power is only about 5W into 50, you dont need a huge heatsink. If you intend to fit an aluminium back panel to your QRP2004, then as long as it is at least 1.5mm thick you could use that to dissipate the heat without the need for fins. Our first prototype used a small (recycled) heatsink 10cm x 7cm x 1cm deep, which worked well. The wide copper strips at the top and bottom of our PCB layout are there purely as a drilling template for the power transistor mounting holes. Drill all PCB holes, hold the PCB in place on your heat sink, drill through the holes in the copper strips into the heatsink, and then redrill the heatsink holes to 3mm, to accept M3 mounting bolts. Once the heatsink has been drilled, cut the template strips off of the PA PCB before mounting any components. Fit the links between PCB tracks and earth plane first, and then populate the rest of the board (apart from the four transistors), as shown by the component overlay diagram and component list in on our web site. There is only one wire link on this board again this is apparent from the component overlay diagram. The LM2931 is mounted horizontally on the PCB over the lower centre copper rectangle. L1 consists of 2 turns of 30 SWG enamel-coated wire on a ferrite bead. T1 and T2 are also wound with 30 SWG enamel-coated wire, but on Amidon BN-43-2402 pig-nose ferrite cores. T1 has two turns on the primary and four turns on the secondary. T2 has a four turn centre-tapped primary (i.e. two turns plus two turns) and a five turn secondary. Make sure that in each case the ends of the primary winding emerge from the core at the opposite end to the secondary winding. When you have finished, they should look like Fig. 26 and Fig 27.

Fig. 26: T1 prototype

Fig. 27: T2 prototype

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It is important to get the correct phasing of the windings when you mount T1 or you will probably find you have a 5W RF oscillator. The phasing of T2 is less important. When its all put together your board should look a bit like Fig. 28.

Fig. 28: Completed PA board The PA board is actually supported at three corners by the power transistors. As you can see from the picture, the leads of the transistors need to be bent upwards at 90 degrees before soldering. For mechanical strength, the fourth corner is secured to the heatsink with an M3 bolt and short standoff pillar. We found the easiest way to complete the PA assembly is to bolt the four power transistors to the heatsink (just finger-tight is fine for now) and then insert their leads through the appropriate holes in the PCB. You may need to adjust the leads a bit (and perhaps slightly rotate the transistors) to make everything fit nicely. The PCB should be as close to the heatsink as possible (to minimise lead lengths) whilst leaving some clearance to avoid shortcircuits. Then solder the transistor leads whilst holding the PCB parallel to the heatsink. The power transistors need to be insulated from the heatsink, so when they have been soldered in, remove the bolts again. Then remount the transistors using standard TO220 Copyright 2004 - 2005 by QRP2004 Design Team Page 39

insulated mounting kits. As always, make sure that the heatsink is flat and the mounting holes are carefully de-burred before mounting the transistors. During testing we found that some PAs were prone to parasitic oscillation. Peter Zenker kindly came to the rescue again, and suggested that the tab of each output transistor (Q2 and Q3) should be connected to the metalwork of the heatsink via a 39R resistor. You can see these resistors near the top of Fig. 28. The resistors help to damp a resonant circuit which appears to relate to the bond-out wires within the transistors. They may not be needed in your version of the PA, but we strongly recommend that you fit them anyway as a precaution. Finally, solder 30cm lengths of thin coax to the input and output connection points of the PA board: we used RG174. After the customary visual check, connect a 50 dummy load (at least 10W rating) to the PA output, turn preset V1 fully clockwise (maximum resistance), and apply 12V from a currentlimited power supply to the board. At this point very little current should be drawn at most 1 or 2mA. Connect the RX/TX control line to ground, and the current should increase to about 100mA. If the current is much different, then you may need to adjust the value of R13 slightly. Then adjust V1 until the total current increases by a further 150mA. As you adjust V1 the current should increase smoothly: any sudden jumps in current suggest parasitic oscillation. If all is well, the heatsink can now be attached to the outside of the back panel of the chassis via standoff pillars. If you have an RF signal generator, its worth checking PA performance in a bit more detail before wiring it up to the rest of the radio. Either monitor the output across the dummy load with an oscilloscope, or connect the dummy load via a power meter. Inject about 1mW (0dBm) at 1.8MHz into the input coax, and check the output power. Repeat for other amateur band frequencies. A prototype produced the results in Table 4: as you can see, PA gain varies by only about 3dB up to 30MHz, but tails off significantly by 50MHz. Frequency 1.8MHz 3.5MHz 7.0MHz 10.1MHz 14.0MHz 18.1MHz 21.0MHz 24.9MHz 28.0MHz 50.0MHz DC Current In 0.9A 1.0A 1.0A 1.0A 1.0A 1.0A 0.9A 0.75A 0.65A 0.3A RF Power out 4.8W 5.3W 5.3W 5.3W 5.1V 4.8W 4.2W 3.1W 2.4W 0.25W

Table 4: PA output power for 1mW RF input Copyright 2004 - 2005 by QRP2004 Design Team Page 40