WPX SSB and MIXED AWARDs!

 I am proud I got the WPX SSB and MIXED today!

ICOM FL-53A CW Filter

 I was reading a post in a FB group. Someone was asking for a CW IF filter for his ICOM IC-703 radio. Specifically for a F-52A, CW 500 Hz 455kHz filter.

Well, I remembered I had some filters and I searched for them. Surely was there, a FL52 and a FL53A (250 Hz). 

As I already have a FL-52A into my IC703, this one stood a looooong time in the shelf.

While I took a picture of the FL53, I noticed there is a serial number on the filter. The serial number was 501 and i thought, "Damn, just five hundred of these untill i got mine"?

Then, I was courious and opened the other filter, the FL-52A. And, surprise, this one was "001"!

So, I got the first FL53A filter from ICOM!!! Dude, brand new, in the original box, mint condition! 

Should I start a collection?

I wrote a request for informations to ICOM, I hope they will answer!

Elmering and stuff

 

Well, don't know how I became an "elmer"... 

In hamradio, "elmer" is usually an old ham who's wisdom is passed to a new ham in an old fashioned way.

The "elmer" is a sage ham who transmits his knowledge to a scholar.

It seems after years of sanding the wires, the information I have accumulated  is useful to someone...

I feel both satisfied and honored that a new radio amateur considered that he had something to learn from me and that he appreciated that I deserved to be on 1000th place in his log!

Thank you YO3HEX.

Xiegu G90 Faults

 I will try to post here faults from various sources and how the problems were mitigated.

The post will be periodically updated. 

Last update: October 31, 2023

 

 7. Rx Front End and ATT section on 2.0.1 rev. Small Signal Board

While trying to help a fellow ham I annotate the PCB layout according to the known schematic released by the factory for a previous version.

I was convinced that they kept the High pass filter formed with L12/L13, C32/C37/C209/C210/C211 but those are not on the PCB!

 

Here is the PCB component layout, according to the known official schematic:

 

 

6. Bricked radio after trying to downgrade to 1.73 FW revision.

    I made a separate post about this kind of problem because I think there is a real need for some details.

You can read here what cause this upgrade/downgrade problem and how to solve it.

 

 5.  Loss of sensitivity albeit ATT works normal

From Michele, IZ2EAS:

Premise: my G90 has the latest version of the SSIGBD (ver. 2.1.1), and the front-end is totally
different from the previous one (ver. 2.0.7); unfortunately, the schematics that are available on-
line refer to the previous version only, so you’re on your own.

Symptoms: sudden loss of about 15 dB of sensitivity, on all bands and modes; the MDS rises from
about -130dBm to -115 dBm. Apart from this, everything else is fully functional, both in TX and RX.
 

Diagnosis: the RF switch AS179 in the first front-end stage (circled in red in the picture) is faulty;
this switch is used to ground the RX line when the radio is transmitting, to protect the front-end (I
suppose). In my radio the switch was stuck grounding the RX line all the time, hence the loss in
sensitivity. Replacing the component fixed the problem. The reasons for the fault are unknown.

 

 

Photos of the repair phases; the switch is small (2mm x 2mm), you will need a good magnifier and
a steady hand.

Below a schematic of the front-end, as I reconstructed it from visual observation of the board:

73, Michele IZ2EAS

Some sidenotes:

 It looks like the ATT section was moved after the front end Rx filters. Michele pointed me to this but i was a little bit reluctant to this untill I looked on the front end pictures he sent to me:

This might improve the SNR and the sensitivity on the DCC SDR receiver because the RF switches which are active components can add noise from out of band strong signals.

Another thing is that with the cost of a third AS179 the protection of the RF Rx section is improved a little bit.

Overall, it looks Xiegu is watching the customer's feedback and try to improve their products.

Here is a sample from the AS179 RF GaAs RF switch:

Thank you Michele!

4. Failure at Power On /  Intermittent Power On

From Groups.IO

" When I press the G90's power button it turns on, and then turns off right
after. All this started to happen after I turned off the equipment by the
power supply, instead of having turned off the G90 first through its power
button."

Possible solution:

Here is the internal power supply and Power On/Power Off switching transistor.

 
The microphone is fed with 9V from the first LDO from the 13.4V.
The Front Panel is fed with 9V and 3V3 from an inside LDO.

It might be a good starting point to check te second LDO 7809 on the lower PCB inside the Main Unit.
You must feed the first LDO with 13.4V through a 500 Ohm from a lab power supply limitd to 200 mA and check the presence of 9V at the output of the LDO.

Before trying to find a solution for the problems, it's a good practice to try to understand where, how and why the fault is ocurring.

A short version of what is happening when you push Power:

a - A short signal is applied to the POWER SWITCH MOSFET;
b - The Main CPU is "talking" to the Front Panel CPU
c - If Main CPU receive valid comms from Front Panel CPU and check is everything is OK, then go step d.
    c' - If there is no valid comms from Front Panel CPU, "COMM LOST" is shown, go to e'
d - The Main CPU send a signal to the same POWER SWITCH MOSFET to keep in energised.
e - Radio boot, radio ON stays ON when Power button is released

   e' - Radio shut down

The first noise you hear is from 9V being applied to the Audio amplifier.
After that, because the Front Panel has no 9V it cannot communicate with the Main Unit CPU which cannot keep POWER SWITCH ON.

Solution A: Probably will be a good option to check if the silicone rubber is in the right place inside the Front Panel, I remember someone on Facebook had the same problem, solved with this. The single differente to that case is the microphone backlight in your case.

Solution B: Another possible solution is to reflash the FW (a correct pair of FW on both main unit and front panel unit).

If none of the above restore the normal functionality of the radio, further investigation must be done around the power switch transistor.

 

3. Various sources. Lightning discharge near antenna.

This problem is fairly common and affects the receiving front end of the radio.

The fault is located on the Small Signal Board (the PCB that is exposed when the upper panel of the Main Unit is removed) and the fault can be repaired without removing it from the radio as the PCB is one side populated with components.

First, the RF is coming from the antena through a Rx/Tx relay (PA RF Board) to that small connector.

Let's explain what is near the RX connector. Here is the relevant part of the schematic: 

On the left there are the two ESD protection components, D4 and D40. These are not regular diodes but specific protection semiconductors. 

The original components are GBLC08I-LF-T7 but might be very well replaced with PESD2V8R1BSF. In order the protection provided to be effective, the replacement components must be connected in anti-paralell mode across the D4-D40!

On the right side there is Q13 which role is to cut the RF that might came from the PA RF board.

At least D4, D40 and the Q13 must be removed to isolate the problem of No Rx!

If Rx is still not working, we must check the proper working of the Attenuator circuit, which is made with U31 and U32.

Those two circuits are similar to SPDT relays but they are semiconductors. In vast majority of cases I saw the issue, the problem is here also, at leat U31 is burned but U32 is still working.

U31 and U32 are located under the metallic shield.

The shield is not soldered and can be lifted with a sharp tweezer. Pay attention when you are removing it, be gently! 

When you put it back, pay attention to the alignement of retaining clips on the PCB!

Pin 5 on U31 is on the middle of the LEFT side.

Pin 5 on U32 is on the middle of the RIGHT side.

You can test the RF then by putting a 22-100 nF capacitor from the pin 5 of U31 to the pin 5 of the U32 (or before and after the separation capacitors).

Here it is how:

On an another burned radio (assisted repair via e-mail, HI):

On EVERY radio I see affected by strong discharge on the Rx, this solved the problem and re-established the capacity of receiving. Of course, with this, the ATT will not work so proper replacement part must be provided to restore the radio to fully working state.

U31 and U32 Original part: 

PE4259: https://www.psemi.com/products/rf-switches/low-il-rf-switches/pe4259

Compatible:

AS213-92LF

https://uk.farnell.com/skyworks-solutions/as213-92lf/ic-switch-rf-spdt-0-1-3-0ghz/dp/1753766 

Here is a picture sent by one of fellow hams with this kind of problem...

2. From Facebook Xiegu G90 Users, Ronan Cantwell

I finally got a bit of time this evening to sit down and repair my Xiegu G90 radio that developed a very strange fault. I posted about this a couple of weeks ago but here's a link to a video of the misbehaving radio anyway .

Before I start, I'll just mention that there are NO schematics or service data available for this radio as Xiegu seem to think that the world will collapse if they release any useful info like that. There is a very good block diagram (re-posted below for reference) produced by Adrian Florescu when he was looking at his own G90. His radio is a different revision than mine but the main blocks are the same.

The radio is an SDR design with incoming RF converted down to two I/Q signals that have a 90 degree phase difference. These are then digitised and processed by various DSP witchcraft and sorcery. On this radio, and many other SDR designs, the I/Q signals are available on a rear socket so they can be fed into a computer soundcard and processed with software like SDR Sharp or HDSDR etc. When tested, the I/Q signals were present and correct at the rear socket (see photo) which proved the front end of the radio was OK, as was the Quadrature Sampling Detector (QSD). This led me to suspect the CODEC chip that digitises these signals and pipes them to the radios main processor.

I checked for the I/Q signals at the input of the CODEC chip and they appeared to be OK there too.... Excellent. Just order up a replacement CODEC chip and that should be it.... Unfortunately, these turned out to be rare as unicorn poop, with none of the online suppliers having ANY in stock at all. There was one eBay seller that had two of them so I grabbed one for £20. It arrived a couple of days later and I fitted it to the radio and fired it back up..... The fault was still there! What?

So... This evening I sat down with a Guinness West Indies Porter or two and worked through things a bit more methodically than before.

I injected some RF into the radio and traced the I/Q signals from the QSD through to the CODEC chip. The signals were fine at the output of the QSD and also at the following buffer stage which is where they are tapped off for the rear socket. After this each of the two signals is fed to another op-amp stage. These op-amps take the I/Q signals and produce a differential output signal from each one. This is the bit I hadn't noticed before. These differential signals are fed to the CODEC chip. Looking at the outputs of the "I" channel's dual op-amp showed the signal to be present and correct on both outputs. Checking the "Q" channel showed only one output to be present. Thankfully, the two channels are identical so I was able to take a couple of measurements from the good channel and compare them to the faulty one.

Across the + and - inputs of each op-amp half were a resistor and capacitor. On the good channel, I could measure a resistance of 2.2k across the pair. On the dead channel - ZERO OHMS! So, it's either a dud chip or an issue with one of the two components. I removed the op-amp chip as gracefully as I could and measured across the resistor/capacitor pair again. Still zero ohms. So, the fault was either the almost invisible capacitor or the almost invisible resistor. On a hunch, I re-flowed the connections to the capacitor. Not an easy task due to its size. I don't mind working with surface mount stuff but these parts were almost invisible. Anyway, after a bit of swearing I re-checked with the meter and the short had gone. Fantastic!

I re-fitted the surface mount op-amp chip, partially re-assembled the radio and gingerly powered it up...... IT ONLY BLUMMIN WORKED !!!!! No more mirroring on the display and the tuning behaved as it should.

Is this a finished repair? No. The fault may have been a tiny solder bridge under the capacitor that was cleared by re-flowing. It may have been an issue with the part that was resolved by heating. Who knows.... To be certain, I'll replace the capacitor but that will mean trying to figure out its value. That will probably mean removing the same microscopic part from the other channel and measuring its value. I'll maybe get round to doing that at around quarter past never o'clock...... Meanwhile... RADIO.

1. From Facebook Xiegu G90 Users, Kyle Arrowood

I have a Xiegu G90 and the receive just started messing up the other day. I have done everything I can think of to remedy the problem with no luck. I have used an online sdr to listen to my signal and it was clear and clean, but when receiving the other stations sound like robots. I used the same antenna on my Yaesu FT-818 and it works perfectly. This happens on every Band on USB and LSB. Does anybody have any suggestions?

I bought it from Bridgecom and would rather not have to deal with them again.

Xiegu G90

Version

Base: 1.77

APP: 1.76

Antenna

G5rv

I have tried:

Factory Reset

Re flashing the firmware

Tried older firmware

A different antenna

Using the extension cable for the head

Changing the rf gain

Changing the filter settings

Checked Vox is off

Checked RIT was set to 0

Plugging in headphones to make sure it wasn't the speaker

Moving the vfo to make sure I wasn't off frequency

Toggled agc, NB, attenuation and pre amp,mode,band

Vfo A and B, compression

Made sure it was on Mic input

Tuned and checked SWR

Left it unplugged from everything for a day

Swapped coax

Even tried Battery power.

The problem was solved after checking the Reference Clock which was bumped by accident to -2 value!

Sine wave CW generator with XR2206

 There is a while since I made a nice electronic keyer; being made with Arduino, a simple solution to monitor the keying was to define a PWM pin and to push the signal into a small piezoelectric speaker.

The sound is horrible and many times I thought to make a small one transistor oscillator.

The goal became more acute as I plan to use ICW, an online CW audio "chat", a place where I can train my CW skills with a human correspondent without bothering others on the waves. Fort that, a sine audio generator is needed.

But... I am lazy. The one transistor sine generator is a mess because you need to make a buffer and an amplifier then some sort of audio filter with a bulky coil, you know... And I am lazy!

Being lazy have some advantages. One of them is some sort of visual memory to compensate. Instead of searching or making improved iterations, I lay back and try to visualise things...
I rememberd one time searching for some components and saw in a box a nice circuit, XR2206, a nice function generator. It was in the same box with a XR2211, a pretty nice FSK decoder. It's presence was vivid in my mind because some months ago I tried to make a CW decoder and the XR2211 was used as a PLL detector for the audio CW signal. But that never worked and I abandoned it for the cheaper LM567. But this is another story...

So, I start to search the endless raws of boxes just to find the ... XR2211!!! My mind was in a dead loop... Wait, it must be a mistake! If I have the XR2211 in the box, WTF I did on that PCB???

Now, the search moved into another boxes. The higher tier, those with failed or abandoned projects...

An pretty soon I found the PLL CW decoder with, you guess it, XR2206! Damn, that's why it never worked!!! Not only I am lazy, I am also stupid.

So, now I have the XR2206 on the bench, everything is it place, after 30 minutes, the generator was ready to be tested.

I used a schematic found on the web and I kept only the necessary components for sine wave as square and triangle was not needed. Of course it didn't worked and I had to go to the datasheet to make things like in that document. I kept the things simple.

Here is the schematic:

Because the schematic was simplified, the sinus is not a perfect one, just a "good enough" one.

The next step will be to find a way to switch ON/OFF the sine wave.