Well, i was playing with the TenTec some more, and noticed that it wasn’t very mechanically stable . The VFO wanders considerably just from the capacitance of objects in its vicinity, by as much as a couple of hundred Hertz. It’s time to get this thing mounted permanently in the box I ordered for it. I’m not sure that will help, but it certainly won’t hurt either.
I sat down for a few minutes, and typed up some raw PostScript to design the front panel and the base pattern, along with markings for all the holes in the case. I’m betting the holes in the circuit board are #4 screws, which require a 7/64th inch hole, and the potentiometers in the front require 5/16″ pilot holes. I’m going to print these out on big label stock, and then cut them and mount them on the case as patterns for drilling.
Don’t know if this will be useful to anyone else, but here ya go.
I still have to figure out what other connectors to add. I suspect i’ll put a regular SO-259 to connect the antenna, sockets for an external speaker or headphones, and maybe a BNC connector for adding an external frequency counter. But this is a good start.
[tags]Amateur Radio[/tags]
I like your template and may use it in the future. I mounted my 1056 in a radio shack plastic enclosure with a metal panel on the plastic removable lid. I’m not having trouble with drift very much. I’ve found the best way to tune for CW if I’m using a transceiver as the transmitter is to select the 1056 and listen to the transceiver for the VFO of the 1056. At its lowest frequency is where the CW of the other ham will be heard. I’ve ordered a frequency counter/display from ebay for about $20 and plan to mount it on the 1056 to better tune in the other stations. I really love this receiver and am having a lot of fun with it.
I was unable to get the frequency counter to work reliably on the 1056. I have, however, gotten extremely good selectivity using the CW GET program utilizing the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) filter settings. Run the radio audio into the mic input to your sound card and the audio out of the sound card to your headphones.
I also tuned the receiver until I heard its vfo in my OMNI D transceiver. I noted the frequency with a pencil on the front panel every increase of 5 kilohertz. ie. 7030,7035, etc. for 40 meters. I have a digital readout on the transceiver.