There's a few (old!) articles on Gunn oscillator gear at
http://www.kwarc.org/10ghz/index.html which may help a bit. I still have a
couple of 24 GHz rigs based on the RF portions of Kustom speed radars, which
have been pressed into service regularly in various contests for many years.
But at least in this area there is zero regular activity on wideband FM now, so
two rigs are essential, one to keep and one to lend to a friend.
There were a few peculiarities to these rigs. One was that the warm-up drift
was greater than the electronic tuning range of the oscillator, which
necessitated using a tunable IF strip. Second was that they came with
circularly polarized horn antennas with an odd circular waveguide interface
which was not amenable to replacement with dishes, making serious dx rather
difficult.
I managed to find a surplus cavity frequency meter, so I was able to set my two
oscillators to frequencies about 30 MHz apart near 24.125 GHz (I think they
were nominally 24.120 and 24.150 GHz but the rigs are lent out at the moment so
I don't have access to the frequency labels).
73,
Steve VE3SMA
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|