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Amazingly, if you're going to 'export' this unit, the road to fitting an external antenna appears wide open ! In standard trim, it uses the ground wire of the audio lead as an antenna. There are holes on the circuit board ready for the antenna, but a couple of small mods may need
to be carried out first. |
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Vcc of 3.3v is originally present at the
antenna pad so you may need to cut a track between the two linked pads just
after the PA transistor and bung a cap in there in order to provide DC
blocking. If you're planning to use a short length of wire or an antenna
with no DC path, you could skip this stage. |
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There's a cap in between ANT
and GND and this needs to be whipped out as we no longer need RF going to
the audio lead. |
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Lastly, the inductor which
used to provide an audio ground for the audio lead whist at the same time
preventing RF going to ground needs to be removed and linked through. In
fact, an RF ground could be just taken from a suitable point but hey,
there's a hole there, why not use it? |
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This is
the back of the board with all the modifications done.
To the right of the board, you may just notice that I
have moved the cap which originally sat between the two antenna pads to
another position just after the output transistor. The track below it
naturally needed to be cut.
Also, the inductor has gone and in its place is a
blob of solder.
Below shows the job in more detail. |
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The two
lovely holes which Chaoyu gave us are in fact a multiple of 0.1" apart so if
you knock out three pins, a standard header drops straight in.
I used this because I had run out of small PCB pins.
The back of the housing could, in fact, be drilled
to accept a socket. This time round, I went for a flying RG174 miniature co-ax
soldered to the two pins I had created. This was terminated with a suitable
BNC male.
This coax exited out of the port where the audio
signal socket usually docks. |
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Test Results
Power is measured
at approximately 18mW out with the power level slightly lower towards the top
end of the band. The match to a 50Ω load was as near perfect.
This mod has been carried out on similar model with the output measured at 10mW. Analysis with this device on the spectrum analyser shows some very pronounced harmonics which would not be an issue at 5nW erp but need to be considered very seriously if these units are connected up. The second harmonic is only 8.2dB down from the fundamental, so a tad over 1mW.
The plot shows the fundamental, 2nd, 3rd and the (30dB down) 4th. |
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CY-668A Technical Description
Connecting to a PA
Back to modifications
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