[600MRG] Restarting my participation

[Jim Miller]

I've been lurking here for about a year and hoping that the FCC would
finally give us a band. I was briefly listening with my Jackson Harbor
upconverter connected to my K3 XVTR input but wasn't happy with the
frequency inaccuracy and set it aside for a bit.

I've recently ordered and should soon receive a GPSDO which will give me a
nice 10Mhz reference, if overkill. I've built up a DEMI 10Mhz distribution
box to feed the K3 ExtRef, upconverter and eventually a downconverter for
transmitting. So I've decided to get going again with a better upconverter.

Rather than use a SA612 I've decided to just use an SBL-3 diode ring mixer
following either a 5 pole or 7 pole input filter. Since I'm going into the
XVTR input on the K3 I'm just going to use a 3db pad to terminate the mixer
output before the K3 and its BPFs.

With this setup the filter, mixer and output pad would result in
about -10db gain. I have a DXE RPA-1 which I can use ahead of the mixer
(+16db) if needed and can also turn on the RX preamp (+11db) in the K3.
Given the background noise below 600Khz I suspect this should be sufficient
when combined with my beverages (BOGs).

I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. Am I making some bad choices
as a result?

Hope to be giving sig reports by December.

Thanks and 73

jim ab3cv