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Technical Corner / Re: PCS must be the best PLL rig people now
« Last post by MonTaylor on January 09, 2026, 10:44:44 am »
found this on ebay. its from PCS

https://ebay.us/m/l9Qoz5
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Technical Corner / Re: PCS must be the best PLL rig people now
« Last post by MonTaylor on January 09, 2026, 07:02:46 am »
for 60 euros its seem very reasonable. i dont suppose the gerbers are around for this?
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WebSDR's / Re: SDR good for listening to Dutch MW pirates 1611khz -1700khz
« Last post by Schmellenschmellen on January 08, 2026, 05:49:54 pm »
Yes I can sometimes get them on a portable if the skip is strong enough. And did have a 1/2 wave 20m long dipole on my fence they came in
on a radio super fine on that +9 or more sometimes. I lost a bit of interest for them as I have some humming crud across the MW band
at night some evenings and gave up.
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Technical Corner / Re: PCS must be the best PLL rig people now
« Last post by Schmellenschmellen on January 08, 2026, 05:44:50 pm »
Yes pcs looks good... I am not sure where pcs get their prices from for audio connectors.. ??? everything costs as an extra with pcs even rca connectors. I suppose it keeps profit margins a bit higher which they probably have to do.

Also this is nice looking from dutch rf shop at least seems to be clean and more serviceable but it would be nice if they could knock up a little encoder for €35 or so

https://dutchrfshop.nl/en/diy-kits-pcb-s/524-parts-kit-drfs06-v2-fm-transmitter-6-watt.html

They don't seem to sell stereo encoders for it.

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Technical Corner / Re: PCS must be the best PLL rig people now
« Last post by Albert H on January 03, 2026, 09:55:06 pm »

Albert does not seem to like Aareff for some reason, I don't know enough about PLL rigs to be able
to confirm or deny if they are any good. Albert seemed to know the man who made NRG and spoke highly of him.


With very good reason.  The Aareff rubbish is an abysmal attempt to copy the original Steven Moss designs.  Steve was a good friend of mine, and an excellent engineer.  He developed the original Veronica designs - including a PLL version - way back in the 80s.  He made the mistake of employing the clown who now runs Aareff, and that clown tried to sue Steve out of business when Steve fired him.  Steve changed the name of his company from Veronica Kits to NRG, because the clown wanted the Veronica name for his inept copy products, and Steve, Christine and I decided that the "Veronica" name was effectively ruined by the clown's behaviour and inept copies, so the name change to NRG was done.  The name was suggested by another friend of Steve's.

The Aareff stuff tries to copy the 80s Veronica designs, but because the clown  didn't understand the principles that ensured the quality of the output from the NRG gear, he just made appalling sprog-boxes that he still persists in trying to sell, despite their abysmal performance and reputation.  The clown ran away after he ripped off too many people - first to Spain, then to the West Indies, where he languishes to this day AFAIK.

The NRG PLL Pro III was a properly broadband design, capable of >4 Watts without tweaks to the amplifier stages.  It could also be switched down to 1 Watt if necessary, and still retained its broadband ability.  The Kallitron oscillator operated at half the output frequency, and "self-doubled" to the output frequency.  It's crucial that the sides of the oscillator are accurately balanced to prevent half-frequency breakthrough - something that the clown didn't understand.  The clown tried to make his ridiculous exciter "no-tune" by saturating the output stage to give the same RF power output right across the band - which it does, but fills the entire band with noise and it gives as much power on the harmonics as it does on the wanted frequency.

That- basically - is why you should stay clear of the Aareff rubbish.  It's an over-priced way to buy a bunch of components to salvage!

The PCS gear is pretty expensive, but Marco's a great engineer, and his designs work very well.
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Technical Corner / Re: hardware silence detector .
« Last post by Albert H on January 03, 2026, 09:29:39 pm »
Yes.  If audio is restored, the counter in the 4060 resets, and the alarm output will cancel when the monostable times out.   The original idea of this circuit was to wake sleepy overnight DJs if they dozed off while a track was playing.

It's easy enough to make it not reset on restoration of audio if that's what you want.   We've used a variant of this circuit to monitor the output from a link receiver, and to play in an emergency mp3 on loss, to maintain continuity of output.
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Technical Corner / Re: 500W LPF
« Last post by Albert H on January 03, 2026, 09:24:22 pm »
That's quite similar to the ones we make, but we put screens between the coils.  I compared the filters with and without the screens, and the improvement in the higher harmonic products was significant with the screens in place.

The best filters we use (for higher power gear) use coax lines as resonant stubs, tweaked accurately for the frequency in use.  The higher power gear always uses pairs of output devices, which has the advantage of tending to null even harmonics.  The normally predominant 2f harmonic is several dB lower than the 3f before filtering if the PA is accurately balanced!  This has the advantage of reducing the stringency of the filters needed, especially for the lower harmonic products.

With a conventional filter like the one Zozo shows above, it's crucial to have really low impedance earthing and make sure that the PA is accurately impedance-matched to the filter to minimise losses and to minimise heating problems.  It's interesting to play with the "sense" of the windings - you can get a couple of extra dB of harmonic suppression by winding the first coil clockwise, the next anticlockwise, and so on.  The improvement is marginal but reducing the mutual coupling between coils helps a little.
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Technical Corner / Re: 500W LPF
« Last post by Radioclick1fm on December 30, 2025, 06:29:35 am »
Marcel thank you , for reply .At the moment in hand i only have this type .in early time i used to use some philips quality ceramic , wich no more here where i am . or i have to make my own , but if thoses do the job at the moment that will be good fr such power , i dont need more RF.
Happy new year .
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Technical Corner / Re: 500W LPF
« Last post by Marcel on December 28, 2025, 10:09:34 am »
Use ceramic tube capacitors of at least 500V.

I used these up to about 200W without any problems.
These did have slightly higher losses than silver-plated(Semco)capacitors or ATC type 100B.
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Technical Corner / hardware silence detector .
« Last post by Radioclick1fm on December 28, 2025, 09:42:04 am »
good schematic if , anyone is going to make a pcb , please share it .i would like to try , Honestly a freind long time make me pcb but i think it have errors and dont work .
I dont know in this schematic , if the source of audio is back , does it switch again to it .
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