[hpsdr] SWR Problems with PennyLane

[Mark Leone]

Thanks Phil. I'll check the +12V supply tonight. I think I remember that LPU
has a jumper for enabling/disabling it, but I swapped LPU for picoPSU a
couple months ago, so I can switch the system on and off. I do have Mercury,
Metis, and Alex running off the same power supply. As best I can tell, Alex
uses the +12V supply and also passes it along to Penny via Mercury. Alex
seems to be working, and I do have the power sense/+12V jumper cable in
place from Mercury to Penny, connected as specified in the Alex manual.

I'll check the voltages that Scotty suggested. I just ordered Pinocchio, so
it may be a few days before I can do that.

This is the first time I've tried to get the TX side working on my HPSDR. I
bought it in October, I think, and held off on doing anything with Penny
since I was waiting for Hercules to be available and didn't have interest in
trying it barefoot. Now I've given up on Hercules and just acquired the
PennyWhistle kit, so I'm trying Penny for the first time.

However... I did do some incidental transmitting as I was figuring out how
the TX software worked, and troubleshooting a problem I had with the way my
key and paddles were wired up. I wasn't looking at output levels, just
whether or not I was keying the transmitter. I figured that was OK since I
had the external auto-tuner in line; but now I realize it wasn't tuning
because the RF input level was below spec, so my SWR could have been very
high. My antenna is resonant on some but not all bands I use, and I don't
recall which bands I may have been tuned to when keying Penny. Could I have
damaged Penny by doing what I did?

73

Mark - K4XML

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil Harman [mailto:phil at pharman.org]
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 6:47 AM
> To: Mark Leone; hpsdr at lists.openhpsdr.org
> Subject: Re: [hpsdr] SWR Problems with PennyLane
> 
> Hi Mark,
> 
> All your jumpers are set correctly and you have the correct version of
> code
> loaded.
> 
> 1. Has this board worked before?
> 2. Is you 12v supply connected and working?
> 3. Please do the voltage check that Scotty suggested so we can see that
> the
> drive control is working.
> 



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