HL2 is here

[Jerry Kaidor]

And so it is.  It arrived today at 5:30PM.  After supper, I put it together.  Just the main board and the filter board - I want to get the base radio working before messing with the I/O board.

After a bit of fiddling and diddling, I got it to receive.  At first, it was overloading the ADC.  Cranking in 25dB of "S-ATT" fixed that.  

Transmit - not so much.  Neither "TUN" or "2TON" gets any RF out.  Neither does yelling into the mike.  No RF on the output meter, no RF on my Telepost LP-100A.  A relay does click, and the transmit light does come on.

The second RF connector on the back gives 8V peak-to-peak on my Rigol scope.

The power supply is a Netgear 12V item, rated at 3.5A.  I put it on a programmable load,

pulled the 3.5A out of it, and its output sagged to 11.7V.  Not ideal, but there should be output.

I suspect that there's an option somewhere that I need to set to turn on the PA.  This is 

Thetis v2.10.3.8 ( FWv74.2 Protocol 1) HL2 MI0BOT, according to the top of the window.

Either that, or the PA is INOP.

Anybody have a clue?

                    - Jerry, KF6VB

[Jerry Kaidor]

Perusing the schematic, it looks like transmit RF goes either to the final amp OR to the low-level output, controlled by a pair of analog switches which are controlled from signal n1 from the FPGA.  

OK, I found it.  There's a checkbox for enabling the PA in Setup->General->PA Control.  Now I got 7W out.  Plugged it into my linear and got

550W out.  Enough to be heard.  Without the I/O board, I can't change bands - gotta stay on 40M.

There are still some operational annoyances I have to deal with:  I'm using audio through "VAC1", and it keeps forgetting that, and I have

to keep re-enabling it.  Space bar doesn't work for PTT, I have to mouse over to the MOX button.  Tuning seems a little weird.

             - Jerry, KF6VB

[Jerry Kaidor]

Just had my first QSO with the HL2.  Got a good report.  I  Absolutely. Love. The. NR2.  Noise level was S9, and I couldn't hear it!

                    - Jerry, KF6VB

[Tim Thorson]

Congratulations Jerry this is exciting! I'm re-reliving this vicariously through you again again.

Yes definitely there's a lot of fittal farting to do, but hey, that's half the fun right there!

There's another checkbox somewhere Turning on the space bar for PTT. tip This is a toggle .  Don't get caught in the trap of holding space bar like I did at first like it was a Traditional PTT,  Habits are hard to break and if you hold the spacebar the keyboard buffer fills up with repeated [spaces] and HL2 goes into spactic TX / RX routine that might freak you out and/or have you scratching your head wondering what the heck is going on LOL...

Tim Thorson
916-572-3467

get 

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[Clifford Heath]

Did you enable the PA?

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[Noel Woodfield]

Easy fix

Go to YouTube:

on7off zero to hero

Kurt's series covers pretty well everything to get you on air.