<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>Hi Conrad,</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Whilst it's a shame to throw away the fantastic phase noise performance of Hermes by using a PLL with internal VCO as they are so poor, its a good call for you as they are quite easy to work with and as you say, you don't actually need the performance of a crystal and the frequency agility is a bonus for a multi-band design</span><span>. <br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>As a matter of interest, the SI-570 is somewhat superior and would give you phase noise performance at 10kHz offset of about
-132dBc/Hz on 144MHz but you can't phase lock it to an external reference so probably a bit limited.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>I too am looking at designing a transverter for Hermes as my main interest is VHF/UHF, I say main interest but actually Hermes has got me quite a bit interested in HF also these days!</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>I need it for more demanding applications like contests so will be going for a more traditional but up to date design using a crystal based oscillator and diode ring mixers.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style:
normal;"><span>I had an idea to combine the outputs of two transverters say for 144 and 70MHz with different IFs so that with the two or more receivers in Hermes I could monitor two bands at once!</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Hope you project goes well.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>73's,</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Andrew</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>G4XZL<br></span></div><div style="color:
rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span><br></span></div></div></body></html>