radium98 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 24, 2023 2:36 pm Shedbuilt if you can post some picture to get inspired

I’ll see what I can dig out. I know I had a few pics of the Band II Tx (I sold that on eBay in about 2006). I may have them on an old HDD. The Band III link and encoder, were moved on with a different Band II Tx, about 30 years ago. I’m afraid I don’t have any pics of those.

shorty wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 9:21 am Before this link receiver set up early 90's, Stephen used an FM Receiver sold by Tandy that he would modify for band 1 & 3 links, it was the one with would effect case, silver effect front, dial type knob, i know he also did some links very close to the airband, i always thought that these were a bit dodgy that may draw unwanted attention.

Yes, I had one of those as my first link, it was on 112mhz if I recall correctly, the 3 element tx/rx aerials were not much smaller than a standard band 2 one, they were realistic tuners modified as you say to also pass through the raw mpx stereo signal, they didn't have any form of AFC and sometimes I needed to retune the link receiver or it would get a bit noisy if it was a long distance link on the fringe of solid reception. That will have been 1991, the first limiter and stereo encoder were housed in the cases of old Altai 3amp CB power supplies with the guts taken out too. Proper ragamuffin style.

One of these badboys.

Thanks frens

Shedbuilt nothing for the rx ?

radium98 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2023 9:50 pm Shedbuilt nothing for the rx ?

Do you mean the Veronica Band III Rx ?
I don’t have any photos, but think it was probably the same a the one in this post.
I don’t have anything from my own Rxs, but can give you some pointers - if that’s what you’re looking for.

Looking back, the Rx design I used to use, was pretty similar to one Albert posted some time back (thread called Link Receiver). Overtone crystal oscillator (slightly different oscillator design, and I didn't buffer the oscillator). Dual gate MosFET mixer, BFR91 RF amplifier (think I used common base topology, but same device). IF design very similar, but think I may have used double tuned quadrature detector, and I used simpler carrier operated relay switching. Slight differences in the tuning circuits; think I used a couple of turns of insulated copper wire over the first Toko inductor, for the antenna input, and possibly single tuned circuit on the output of the RF amplifier to the mixer (double tuned on the input to the RF amplifier). I think your main problem, Rigmo, was the Toko inductors, but almost everyone was using them at that time. I think people like Enigma stock equivalents for those parts. The most common S18 inductors, used for Band 1 Rxs, show out of stock at Enigma (not sure what their re-stock situation is like), but the tuned circuits in the RF section, could all be replaced by suitable homebrew air cored inductors and trimmer caps.

This is also not to dissimilar, but without an RF amplifier before the mixer, and a VFO instead of crystal.
http://sm0vpo.altervista.org/_visitors/rx/linkrx.htm
It also looks a lot like an "ugly built" Rx picture posted by Veronica / NRG (except that one used a Toko coil for the mixer output). Can't see the details, but it looks a lot like it at the building blocks level. Link to the Gareth archive.
http://www.gareth.net.nz/nrgworkshop/ty ... ircuit.jpg

Forgot about this thread from Reverend. Really good info and detail here viewtopic.php?hilit=receiver&p=33922&si ... 704e572b95

thanks