[hpsdr] SWR Problems with PennyLane

[Phil Harman]

Hi Mark,

First test your PennyLane board by connecting it directly to a 50 ohm dummy 
load. Your PC code should indicate 500+mW output in Tune mode and the LEDs 
on the board (which form a power bar graph) should all be on.

The change in flash rate of LED 7 happens when the PTT is active - I need to 
add this to the documentation.

It may be that 500mW is not enough power for your ATU to  tune correctly  - 
I suggest you check the specification.

73 Phil...VK6APH


-----Original Message----- 
From: Mark Leone
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2012 6:15 AM
To: hpsdr at lists.openhpsdr.org
Subject: [hpsdr] SWR Problems with PennyLane

***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****

I finally got around to getting the TX side of my HPSDR up and running,
and I'm unable to tune the output of PennyLane. I don't have a PA yet;
PennyLane connects through Alex to an external Automatic Antenna Tuner
(LDG AT-100ProII), which has a coax feed to an inverted V dipole that
I've been using with my other rig for a year and a half.

Using ghpsdr, when I press Tune, I see the SWR values cycling, and it
never gets an acceptable one. The same thing happens if I key the rig in
CW mode (I don't have a mic yet). Using PowerSDR, I see output power and
reflected power of 0, presumably rounded down from the 50 mW output of
PennyLane. But I hear the CW tone of my transmitter in the audio form
Mercury, though an O-Scope connected in line through an RF sampler
doesn't detect anything.

I tried connecting my other rig (Kenwood TS-570) into the external
tuner, with the Kenwood internal tuner bypassed, and I can tune to a
usable SWR. I also tried bypassing Alex, routing the coax directly from
PennyLane to the tuner, with the same result. Also I connected a 50 Ohm
dummy load to the output of PennyLane, and got the same result.

PennyLane has LED 1 on solid and LED 7 on slow blinking. When I key the
transmitter, LED 7 switches to fast blink. I understand the meaning of
these LEDs from the documentation, except I didn't see a reference to
slow vs fast blink for LED 7. As far as I can tell, this is telling me
that the board is powered on, output level is zero, and the firmware is
running.

I plan to build PennyWhistle as my next activity, but I assume I should
be able to tune the output of PennyLane directly; so I probbaly
shouldn't proceed with a PA until I figure out what I've done wrong.

Mark - K4XML
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