Sunday 12 February 2012

Idea for a low power amateur radio amp

As I said below I am taking an interest in low power amateur radio. To this end I have been looking at SDR Transceivers, and at a low power amplifier for 7MHz operation.

Here is the schematic:

Amp schematic The input is a unbalanced to balance balun with 1:1 ratio, loaded by the 56R resistor. The amplifier uses a pair of IFR510 MOSFETs, whose bias is set by the 1K variable. The output stage power is through a balanced transformer/RFC design, and is transferred to the output by a transformer, The MOSFETs need a load of 19R when the Vcc = 13.8V and the power is 10W So the transformer ratio n = sqrt(Rout/RL) or sqrt(50/19), or 1:1.6.

The primary also must have a reactance of > 4 x 19R at 7MHz, so the inductance must > 1.7uH. The output ferrite is chosen to be a Binocular design with Al = 385nH, so for >1.7uH we need n = sqrt(L x 1000/AL) or sqrt(1.7x1000/385) = 2t, so the secondary must be 3t to give a ratio (1:1.5) near the required 1:1.6.

The output passes through a low pass filter to remove harmonics. Seems simple, but will it work?

Critical Parts List

Input transformer: 10t:10t, #24 wire, Farnell torroid 180009 (type 61, TN22/14/7mm, AL = 125)

RFC: 10t:10t, #22 wire, Farnell torroid 180009 (type 61, TN22/14/7mm, Al = 125)

Output transformer: 2t:3t, #20 wire, Fair-Rite Binocular Ferrite BN-61-202, Al = 385

LPF: 1.3uH, 3t, #20 wire, Farnell torrid 180008 (type 61 TN13/7/5.4mm, Al = 125) MOSFETs: IRF510, part number 844-IRF510PBF from Mouser Electronics

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