Part II -- Farhan VU2ESE, Dean KK4DAS, and Bill N2CQR on technical issues in SolderSmoke HQ (East)

Part II

Our talk about rigs continues. In this part we get into more technical topics. Farhan continues to describe his zBITX rig, telling us about the 25 watts out from two RD16 transistors in the final.

Dean and I trash talk FT-8. Farhan urges Dean to build an sBITX for VHF/UHF.

Dean and I tell Farhan about our efforts to understand biasing and drive levels in RF amplifiers. We also talk about how to use IMD measurements in setting the bias levels on RF power amplifiers. Farhan talks about the large amount of lore that surrounds this issue.

We talk about the legacy of Farhan's earlier projects, like the RF power amplifier from the BITX40 module. Farhan warns us of distortion from the mic amp circuit from the uBITX (oh no!) Farhan tells us about the need for hams to move beyond Class A and Class AB, and to get into Class D and Class E.

We were hoping that Pete N6QW might be able to join in via Skype, but he had an important scheduling conflict. I relay to Farhan Pete's comments about radio greatness.