Messing about with Microwaves – Eyal Gal 10Ghz units

20/12/2012…

There seems to be quite a bit of surplus microwave gear about on *THAT* auction site and these units out of Israel are very interesting to say the least.

Even though I have a fully functioning 10Ghz field day transverter setup, I decided to buy one of these units, looking to get another 10Ghz transverter  happening with the intention of having a “loaner” system – one that can be loaned out to other hams keen to have a taste of microwaves, Therefore  more stations and more activity on 10Ghz for field days!

The 10Ghz (3cm) band is an ideal band to introduce a newcomer to the wonderful world of microwaves. It’s a popular band, so there are more likely to be more stations active on a field day weekend. Most hams that gravitate towards microwaves tend to get 10Ghz up and running before all the other bands as the gear is relatively common and it’s fairly cheap to get up and running.

The Eyal Gal units are a complete RX system requiring just an IF radio, a local oscillator and an antenna to receive a signal.

For transmit, things are a little more complicated. These units are a just an amplifier at 10Ghz, so we need to add a transmit mixer and some filtering to complete a transceiver.

There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of info about them, but Roger, G8CUB has some info on his webpage, including some updates on some of the variations that exist on these units

Miguel, EA4EOZ also has a nice little page about his adventures with a -22 variant of these devices.

This blog is the story of how my unit is going together and the parts I’m using to make it happen.

First impressions…

Here are some images of the unit as it arrived from the seller art-in-part.

These units look to be well made, and the case is milled aluminium, with an aluminium back cover that cover the control side of things. The RF side has been seam welded covers so if you want to get in there, good luck!

The RF connections are all female SMA. The control/power supply connectors are .1 inch pitch spacing. Luckily I save a fair bit of surplus electronics stuff, so had a connector on hand that plugged straight in for the power connections…

The first thing I have organised for the system is a local oscillator multiplier from Graham, VK3XDK. This unit conveniently has two outputs at the required frequency for both TX and RX LO inputs so it was an easy choice. Just give the multiplier a clean signal at 1656Mhz and the first stage multiplies to 4468 and the second stage doubles this to our LO frequency of 9936Mhz.

I’ll add more to the blog as I progress…

Well!!! It’s been 4 years, and after losing interest in Amateur Radio, I’m back!

I have obtained a VK3XDK 9936 MHz multiplier kit and will put this together soon.

 

I have also obtained a MiniCircuits MCA1-12G mixer and experimenters PCB from Minikits To handle the transmit mixer side of things…stay tuned!

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