[hpsdr] Penelope-PennyWhistle initial operation

[radio at netins.net]

Lurking and listening to the April 12 Team Speak I heard you had still 
not heard about your inquiry.
I built a Penny Whistle to use with my Hermes and I don't have 
experience with other exciters.
Please see my comments below.

On 2019-04-10 8:19 pm, AA8K73 GMail wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> 
> The lust for high power has called me and I'm connecting my
> PennyWhistle to my Penelope for the first time.  I not seeing gain out
> from PennyWhistle.
> 
> 
> The Penelope is an original TAPR.  I made the T2 modification to
> rotate the output transformer.

<<<< When I put the Penelope output into a
> dummy load, and PowerSDR Tune set to 100, I see 9.5 volts peak-to-peak
> across the 53 ohms.>>>

The exciter output of 9.5 v p-p (about 3.4 V RMS) is roughly 1/5 Watt.
I have never measured the output of my Hermes, but as I recall it is 
rated at about 200 mW.
This should be enough to get power out of Penny Whistle.

I was never able to get the published power output from my Penny 
Whistle, but this may have been due to my lack of attention at carefully 
winding the binocular output transformer.

I set the bias on my Penny Whistle for SSB use, but used it for CW and 
digital modes.  The output of Penny Whistle is run through ALEX and to 
the load (antenna or dummy load)  On 6m I can only get 5W output as 
indicated in HPPower SDR.  The most output was about 17 W on 30m.

My Penny Whistle failed and I replaced both output transistors to 
restore operation.  Before replacing the output transistors I used a 
piece of plate class and fine emery cloth to flatten the heatsink 
surface.  New insulators were used with the transistors that were 
replaced.  When operation was restored I did not notice any improvement 
over the original power.  It worked for many, many hours until we 
changed homes.  Since then, I have not put up any antennas other than a 
temporary 2m antenna.

To obtain the output powers on my Penny Whistle I never have had to use 
the full amount of drive indicated in HPPowerSDR.
Based upon what you have posted and my experience with Penny Whistle, I 
think something is definitely wrong with Penny Whistle or the way it is 
being used.

I would check and then check again the coax cables and T/R wiring.  
Also, you should have some sort of filtering on the output of Penny 
Whistle.

Finally, look into the settings in HPPowerSDR.  You may have to change a 
setting there.  I made screen captures of my settings to reduce chances 
for setup errors when updates were installed.  If you would like to see 
my settings, let me know.

John,  W0GN



> 
> 
> 1.  Is this normal output for the Penelope?
> 
> 
> When I put PennyWhistle on Penelope, the voltage to the dummy load is
> 3 volts peak-to-peak.  I even manually grounded the PennyWhistle bias
> control in case there was a problem with Penelope's PTT-out.
> PennyWhistle's 13.6 volt power increases about 1 ampere when the bias
> control is grounded.
> 
> 
> Any hints for troubleshooting?
> 
> 
> Mike - AA8K
> 
> Metis 3.0
> Mercury 3.4
> Mercury/2 3.4
> Penny(Lane) 1.8
> PowerSDR OpehHPSDR mRX PS v3.3.8 (6/9/16)
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