3.6 POWER SUPPLY AND RX/TX SWITCHING When the PTT is operated the TX/RX relay is energized and the transmit signal is passed to the antenna, When the PTT is not operated the relay switches the antenna through to the receive circuits. The relay also switches power to the TX and RX sections as required. The power supply is also made available on separate connectors for the external VFO and LED $ meter. Diode D10 and a 2A fuse provide both over current and reverse polarity protection. If the supply is connected in reverse D10 will conduct and the fuse will blow. If however, the supply is not capable of supplying much more than 2A, the fuse may not blow, but the supply will be limited to a safe voltage and no damage should occur, 3.7 RECEIVE MIXER Signals from the antenna are applied to a bandpass filter formed with two transformers T2, T3 and capacitors C50, C51 and C52. The antenna is link coupled to T2 while the output is fed from a tap on the tuned primary winding of T3 to for improved impedance matching ‘The mixer US is another $A612. The input is protected with a pair of back to back diodes and fed single ended into pin 1. Pin 2 is grounded to RF by C54. Zener diode ZD3 provides a stabilized 6.8 volt supply. VFO signal is injected into pin 6 at about 300mV pk-pk. The balanced output which contains the sum signal of 10MHz is fed to broadband transformer T4, The output of T4 is passed to the crystal filter when DC current flows through R43 and into D8. 3.8 PRODUCT DETECTOR ‘The 10MHz SSB intermediate frequency (IF) signal from the crystal filter is applied to the product detector U2. The product detector is formed with another SA612 and mixes the IF signal with the 10MHz BFO signal to produce an audio output. The BFO is adjusted slightly above the crystal filter response so that Lower Side Band signals are detected correctly. Abalanced input audio amplifier is formed with one half of a NESS32dual low noise op-amp (U3a). A reference supply for the non-inverting input is obtained from R26, R27 and C35. The high frequency response of U3a is limited by C34, C38 and C40, while capacitors C36 and C37 reduce the low frequency response. The output of U3a is fed via a 1uF coupling capacitor to the AF gain potentiometer. The audio signal is also made available via R34 on a separate connector for a LED S meter to display receive signal strength. Transistor Q5 is turned on in TX mode and shorts the audio signal input to the LED meter to ground. This stops switching transients from being displayed, As the receiver gain is fixed between the antenna and the AF gain control, the audio level across the AF gain control is directly proportional to the receive signal strength. The LED $ meter measures this audio level and accurately displays the receive signal strength on an LED bar graph. MST2 40M Construction Manual - Issue 1 Page 83.9 AuDIO POWER AMPLIFIER Audio fed from the wiper of the AF gain control is amplified by the other half of the dual op-amp (U3b) which is configured for a gain of 5. The amplified signal is then applied to the audio power amplifier (U4) to drive a loudspeaker. This is a TDA7052A device with a Bridge-Tied Load (BTL) output. This configuration has a number of advantages for operation at low supply voltages, and also allows the speaker to be directly connected to the chip without the need for a large coupling capacitor. G\ Both speaker wires are connected directly to the IC. Connecting a speaker wire or external load to ground may damage the IC. 3.10 AupIo AGC ‘The main reason for choosing the TDA7052A is the ability to alter the gain over a very large range by varying the DC voltage at pin 4. If pin 4 is left floating an internal source provides about 1.1V resulting in a maximum gain of +30dB. As pin 4 is pulled low the gain decreases, and if pulled all the way to ground the device is effectively shut off. By varying the amount of current pulled from pin 4 the gain can be continuously varied. This feature is used here to provide an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) circuit to even out receive audio and limit blasts from the speaker on very strong signals. ‘The power supply for U4 is set to +8V by a 7808 regulator. This is done for two reasons. Firstly the TDA7502A can become unstable at high supply voltages, but more importantly to fix the voltage at the output pins under no signal conditions. With no signal this voltage is half the supply voltage (+4V), but when audio is fed to the speaker the voltage at pin 5 will swing above and below the 4V quiescent point. The base of transistor Q7 is DC connected to pin 5 by a resistor and a trimpot. The trimpot (VR2) is adjusted so that transistor Q7 is just below conduction when there is no audio. When a signal is received the positive audio peaks at pin 5 will start to turn on Q7 and cause some current to be pulled from pin 4 and lower the gain. When the audio decreases, Q7 will begin to turn off which raises the voltage on pin 4, and increases the gain. This action continually attempts to adjust the audio level and provide AGC action. Capacitor C48 stores the charge in between positive cycles to avoid Q7 turning off during negative peaks and causing distortion. For such a simple circuit the dynamics are very good and make a great addition to the receiver. In TX mode transistor Q6 is turned on hard and pulls pin 4 immediately to ground, This shuts off U4 and prevents any spurious audio from the transmit circuits being heard in the speaker. When returning to RX mode C48 charges slowly and provides a smooth click-less transition. MST2 40M Construction Manual - Issue 1 Page 9‘NST240M Construction Mamual-leuet Pag