Using surplus GE Mastr II and Exec II transmitters as amateur radio beacon transmitters

Back in 2000, a friend of mine (Glen, WA7X) wanted to place VHF and UHF propagation beacons at his cabin located in remote central Utah.  On-hand were used GE MASTR II Exec FM transceivers:  These radios - similar to the GE Mastr II - are crystal-controlled transceivers that date from the mid-late 70s and into the mid 80s and are still available surplus.  Available in "low", "high" and "UHF" band versions all amateur bands from 6 meters through 70cm may be covered (including 220 MHz with a bit of modification.)

For the purposes of beacon operation, it does not matter if the Mastr II or the Exec II (a slightly simpler, lower-cost version) is used as they share many of the same parts and some of the modules.  Of course, the receiver portion of the radio (front end casting, RF and IF boards) are not needed for beacon operation, but at least on the MVP, the interface board (on the "bottom" side) contains needed voltage regulators and the like.

To this end, three beacons - one each for 6 meters, 2 meters and 70cm - were constructed using modified (by me) GE MASTR II Exec radios and installed at a remote site belonging to WA7X.

Keying the transmitter:

The most obvious way to key the transmitter would be to use the PTT line - and this would work... sort of - but there are problems with doing it this way.

• The PTT line keying the transmitter is fine for FM, but for keyed CW, the attack/decay waveform leaves much to be desired:  Severe "key clicks" are the result.
  

• The crystal oscillator is actually keyed.  While you might get away with this on 6 meters, turning on and off the oscillator itself will likely result in an audible "chirp" - especially on 70cm!

What this means is that one needs to keep the oscillator running all of the time so that it remains stable and key farther down the signal path.  Fortunately, there is another way to key the radio.

Using the power control for keying:

These transmitters have a power control, of sorts.  In the PA (Power Amplifier) module there are a number of amplifier stages to take the 200-400 milliwatt signal from the exciter up to the rated output power of the final amplifier, typically 35 or 100 watts, depending on the type.  Typically the "pre-pre-driver" and "pre-driver" have their collector voltages fed via a series transistor and this voltage is made adjustable to set the amount of drive to the driver and output transistors.

While one could simply key this voltage, there is a problem:  Because all of the stages are "Class-C" type (e.g. non-linear) key clicks would surely result if the pre-pre-driver and pre-driver voltages were simply turned on and off.  What's more is that with this non-linear RF circuitry one will, as the drive power is increased by adjusting that voltage upwards, get no RF output at all - but very suddenly, the RF output will appear and increase very rapidly with respect to voltage - and then, suddenly, the rate of increase starts to drop again very quickly.  In other words, over a very small adjustment range one will go from no power at all to full power.  If we want both "clean" keying signals and to be able to select a given power level, things get a bit more complicated.

What this means is that you really can't use the original power control circuit for keying, either, but another, fairly simple circuit may be substituted, described below:

Figure 1:
Beacon power controller schematic.  This circuit not only provides keying shaping, but allows one to select three pre-set output power levels.  The PTT line of the transmitter itself is asserted all of the time causing the oscillator to run continuously.
Click on the image for a larger version

Explanation of the keying/power control circuit:

A sample of the RF voltage is provided (the terminal "From RF Power Detector") and applied to U1A, which is a unity-gain follower.  This voltage, from the RF detector, is then applied via U1D, wired as a unity-gain, inverting amplifier:  If the RF output of the amplifier - which is the voltage from U1A - drops below that of that applied to its inverting input, its output will go higher which, buffered by U1C, will turn on the output 2N3904 stage some more, causing the modified RF amplifier (described below) to produce more power.  The non-inverting input of U1D is provided from the "1 watt adj." potentiometer via U2A and in this way, the output power can be made variable by its setting.

The above circuit controls the amplifier power output via a closed-loop servo - but keying it while minimizing key "clicks" must still be done.  The keying input (active high - that is, ground = un-keyed, voltage = keyed)  is applied via U2B, wired as a comparator:  Its noninverting input is supplied from the output of U2A only because it was a convenient voltage somewhere between 2 and 4 volts.

When the transmitter is keyed, U2B's output goes low, but the minimum voltage is set to be three diode drops below the output of U2D and this discharges the 0.47 capacitor on the non-inverting input of U2C slowly through the 220k resistor.  Conversely, when unkeyed, the output of U2B goes high and that same 0.47uF capacitor is charged more quickly via the 22k resistor and its higher voltage is ilmited by the single diode "pointing" to the output of U2D.  The ultimate result of this is a voltage-limited keying waveform being applied to the non-inverting input of U2C that has carefully-controlled rise and fall times.

When the voltage applied to the noninverting input of U2C rises ("unkeyed") its output voltage also rises and is conducted into the same signal line as the "Power Detector" via a diode:  This high voltage - seemingly from the RF power detector - signals as if the RF power output is too high and the RF output is dutifully reduced to zero in response.  Conversely, when the transmitter is keyed, the output of U2C drops and its output diode no longer conducts, the RF output rising to that set by the power control.  The rise/fall of the signal being applied to U2C minimizes key clicks.

In reality, there is only one power level setting - the "1 watt adj" - and this is, by far, the most sensitive, requiring the greatest amount of control.  To effect higher power settings (e.g. 10 watts and 100 watts) the beacon controller turns "on" one of two N-channel FETs with series potentiometers in the drain lead:  When the respective FET is turned on, this parallel resistance shunts the output of the RF detector, requiring more RF power to be output to achieve the same voltage as before, increasing the RF output power as appropriate.  Of course, this means that when calibrating everything, the "1 watt" power setting must be done first!

Modification to the GE RF amplifier module:

Power control:

The GE MASTR power amplifiers' output power was originally controlled by a module that either did so by sensing the RF output from a power sensor, or "open loop" using a thermistor to try to compensate for the change in amplifier gain with temperature.  In either case an NPN emitter-follower transistor was placed in series with the supply voltage for the first two driver stages:  The higher the voltage on the base of this NPN transistor, the more voltage applied to these stages - and the higher the driver (and output) power.

Figure 2:
Modifications to the GE amplifier board
Click on the image for a larger version

This NPN transistor was replaced with a PNP or P-channel FET that allows the output power to be controlled by pulling the control pin (base or gate, as appropriate) low (e.g. toward ground):  It is this line that is pulled toward ground by the control circuit depicted in Figure 1.

The center-left insert of Figure 2 depicts this modification using a PNP Darlington transistor:  It simply replaces the original NPN follower - a task that requires a bit of rewiring and the addition of the two transistors shown.  (A standard non-Darlington PNP was originally tried, but it proved difficult to turn it "on" enough to provide 100 watts of RF output.)

A somewhat better option is the use of a P-channel power FET:  The same combinations of 1k resistors (gate-source, gate-control) are used:  The "loop gain" of the FET circuit is somewhat lower than that of a bipolar Darlington pair but being a FET, it is very easy to drive.

RF Sensing:

Figure 3:
The RF power sense circuit, coupled to the RF output

While some versions of the GE amplifier modules have built-in RF sensing, some (e.g. the MASTR Exec II) do no, so the circuit depicted in the upper-left corner of Figure 2 is required.  This is simply a small piece of wire laid atop the trace that goes from the output of the RF amplifier to its low-pass filter as depicted in Figure 3.  The desired amount of coupling is that which will yield approximately 2.5 volts of DC output across a 47k resistor at 1 watt of RF output.

Conversely, a small-value (e.g. 2-50pf) ceramic variable capacitor could be used to couple to the detector diode rather than the piece of wire:  It must have a 100 volt rating, minimum, and initial adjustment would start from the lowest-capacitance.

Temperature stability:

As expected, the power will vary slightly with temperature - but between summer and winter, only about 5% power variance has been noted.

Beacon keying:

The keying for this beacon is provided by a simple PIC-based controller that simply keys an output line with the Morse message, but any device that can store/send Morse could be used.  The only departure from a standard device - like a "WinKeyer" - is that it has outputs to select 1, 10 or 100 watts for different parts of the message.  The majority of the beacon message is transmitted at the 10 watt level to reduce overall power consumption, but it contains an embedded 5-second key-down (and accompanying message) at all three power levels.

The code for this keyer is very simple (if you wish to have a copy, send me an email) and could be easily implemented on about any similar device:  An Arduino mini would be a more contemporary choice.

As mentioned above, the transmitter's original PTT line is keyed all of the time that the beacon is in operation, causing the oscillator to be continuously running.  The only exception to this is that a remote (IP-controlled relay) device is connected to the PTT lines of these radios allowing the transmitters to be disabled remotely.

* * *

These beacons have been in operation at the WA7X site since late 2000 - over 20 years at the time of writing:  They have been extremely reliable - the only issues occurring fairly early-on and being due to random component failures, and their signals have been heard far and wide.

For more information about this beacon and its history, see the "WA7X Beacon Technical page".

This page stolen from ka7oei.blogspot.com

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A low power PSK31 transmitter using a Class-E power amplifier and envelope modulation

Back in 1999, not too long after the first appearance of PSK31, I decided that I wanted to construct a beacon transmitter that would operate using this mode - but at the time the only practical means of generating PSK31 was with a computer, a sound card and an SSB transmitter.  Not wanting to tie up that much gear for this purpose I set about to use the PIC16C84 microcontroller, which was popular among the homebrew builders at the time.

By this time the AM broadcast band had (relatively) recently been expanded up to 1705 kHz but very few stations occupied the new 1605-1705 kHz segment.  In perusing the FCC rules I noted that Part 15 §219 had been modified to allow low-power experimental operation (100 milliwatts DC input with a size-limited antenna) in this new segment and I decided that with the lack of activity in this frequency range that it was a good time to put up a "MedFER" (Medium Frequency Experimental Radio) beacon.

Figure 1:
The "Balanced Modulator" (Baseband) version of the PSK31
transmitter/exciter.  Built to test a concept, it has a few flaws,
but it did work.
Click on the image for a larger version.

The balanced modulator method

Upon investigating various methods of producing a PSK31 signal I experimented with the generation of a bipolar baseband signal that could be applied directly to a balanced mixer.  While this method worked well it had the problem than it required that all following stages be linear.

A diagram of the prototype of that transmitter may be seen in Figure 1.  For this transmitter a crystal-controlled oscillator is constructed using two transistors (Q1, Q2) and the output is buffered by U3, a 74HC00 quad NAND gate.  The frequency used for this circuit was unimportant as it was a "proof of concept" and I (think that I) used a 4.9152 MHz crystal which, although not in any amateur band, still allowed an "across the room" reception with a short length of wire as an antenna.  Following the first U3 NAND buffer the remaining sections are used to provide a two phase signal with the output split 180 degrees which fed a very simple balanced modulator consisting of just two diodes, a few capacitors and some resistors.

To provide modulation a PIC16C84 was used to provide a 32-step staircase modulation using PWM techniques as this (now ancient) part had no PWM peripherals.  This PWM output, done using "bit-bang" software with a "NOP-tuned" interrupt service routine operated at a frequency of 1 kHz, which is exactly 32 times that of PSK31's 31.25 Hz baseband frequency.  The output was filtered with a two stage R/C low-pass filter network consisting first of a 4.7k resistor and 0.1uF capacitor followed by a second stage with a much higher impedance consisting of a 150k resistor and 0.033uF capacitor providing around 3dB of roll-off at the 31.25Hz baseband frequency and about 40dB of attenuation at the 1 kHz PWM rate while yielding an acceptable amount of Inter-Symbol Interference ("ISI").  The result of this filtering is that the vast majority of the 1kHz energy is removed, leaving a pretty clean 31.25 Hz baseband signal.

Figure 2:
Phase diagram of balanced modulator
circuit in Figure 1.  The propagation
delay of the gates result in a rather
imprecise 180 degree phase shift
causing the upside-down "Vee"
in the phase diagram.

The filtered PWM output was then buffered and split into two signals, one of them inverted, using several op-amp sections and these two signals are applied differentially via simple R/C networks across the two diodes:  If the baseband signal from the PWM output were to go "positive" (e.g. above the mid-supply voltage)  the other side would go "negative" and turn on one diode, but it if were to swing the other way the other diode - fed with an RF signal 180 degrees out of phase with the first - would be turned on.  The end result is a fairly nice, linear BPSK envelope and baseband waveform when viewed on a receiver connected to an oscilloscope.

While it worked to prove a concept, this signal has a few shortcomings.  First, the RF signal from the oscillator and buffer is not likely to have a precise 50% duty cycle (unless it is digitally divided from a higher frequency) which means that a bit more RF energy would be available in one phase than the other, resulting in a somewhat "lopsided" BPSK amplitude envelope - a trait that only minimally affects demodulation and overall signal quality if the difference is only 10-20% (e.g. a dB or so).  The other problem has to do with a NAND gate being used to provide the 180 degree phase shift (e.g. signal inversion) in that the addition of the inverting gate adds a few 10s of nanoseconds of propagation delay.  While this doesn't sound like much, it does amount to a significant number of degrees of phase even at low HF frequencies and the end result is that the "Phase Diagram" is slightly distorted and produces the inverted "vee" pattern as seen in Figure 2.

While I could have gotten this method to work (e.g. used a bandpass/lowpass filter to get a nice, clean sine wave and a transformer or digital divider to get the 180 degree phase shift) it does have a down side:  All subsequent stages would need to be linear.  While not a great technical problem it did mean that for the MedFER transmitter, which has a 100 milliwatt DC input power limit according to FCC rules, a linear final amplifier would have at best around 70% efficiency which would mean that I'd lose a bit more than 1dB of signal over an amplifier that was 100% efficient.  While this may not sound like much I figured that I could do better with a more efficient amplifier scheme.

Comment:

This "baseband" PSK31 signal produced using the differential op amp scheme noted above was successfully applied experimentally to some "digital only" radios such as the Small Wonder Labs "PSK" series.  This was accomplished by "lifting" the balanced modulator above DC ground via capacitive RF coupling and applying the modulation differentially to the diode ring mixer's IF port and its ground and shifting the carrier oscillator to move this "DC" signal into the crystal filter's baseband.

The pages linked near the end of this article provide details on this modification.

The Amplitude Modulator Method

Having proven the ability to produce a reasonable quality PSK31 waveform with a lowly PIC I decided to try a different approach:  Apply high-level modulation to the output amplifier stage.  What's more, this amplifier stage need not be linear at all:  It could be a conventional Class C stage which could boost the efficiency to something around 80%, but I decided on going a step farther and use a Class-E amplifier.

Figure 3:
Diagram of the "AM" version of the transmitter using separate amplitude
and phase modulation paths, allowing a non-linear but highly efficient
Class-E output amplifier to be used.  The capacitor, diode and resistor
on the gate of Q1, the output transistor, are used to prevent the FET
from being stuck "on" and shorting out the power supply should
the RF drive disappear for any reason and the output of the NAND
gate driving it be left in a "high" state.
Click on the image for a larger version.

I first became aware of the Class-E amplifier more than a decade earlier when my friend Mark, WB7CAK, designed one for his LowFER (Low Frequency Experimental Radio) beacon that operated in the 160-190 kHz "experimenter's" band, authorized by §217 of FCC part 15.  As with MedFER operation, the input power was also limited - 1 watt in this case - also with a size-limited antenna.  After a bit of number crunching and fiddling on the workbench Mark came up with a simple circuit and a few basic, simplified equations that described how such an amplifier could be built and published an article in the Western Update - a small publication tailored mostly for LowFERs.  Because this publication may be difficult to find I have reproduced it with permission from the author and it may be found here:  (Link).

While the maths behind the derivation of the operation of a Class-E amplifier can be somewhat involved, the concept is quite simple:  When the drive signal to the transistor - typically a power MOSFET at LowFER frequencies - goes low, the transistor shuts off and it does this quickly (e.g. driven "hard") so that transistor spends as little time as possible "partially" conducting between "on" and "off" states.  When the transistor turns off, the voltage on the drain rises, being pulled up by the choke in the circuit, but it then falls again due the "ringing" of a resonant circuit on the output tank.  Because this tank circuit is tuned appropriately, precisely at the time that the drain voltage hits zero again because of this "ringing" the output transistor is switched back on.

The result of these two events is that the FET is either completely on or off which means that little or no power is dissipated in it.  What's more, when the FET is (quickly!) turned back on, it does so just as the voltage happens to swing to zero, practically eliminating any losses that would occur at that instant due to the intrinsic resistance of the FET absorbing the current, and from other losses of components of the tank circuit being "shorted out" had voltage been present.

Figure 4:
The constructed MedFER beacon transmitter, built on the bottom
of a weather resistant outdoor enclosure to be mounted at the base
of the antenna.

The result of all of this is an RF amplifier that (exclusive of the drive signal) is demonstrably capable of 95%-98% efficiency!  In the MedFER and LowFER world this means that with our power level being limited on the input, we will have, for all practical purposes, all of our input  power at our disposal rather than, say, 70-80% of it as would be the case with almost any other amplifier type - a gain of about 1dB.

The obvious problem with a Class-E amplifier is that the drive signal must be a fast rising/falling square-shaped wave that slams the transistor on and off which means that amplitude modulation of that drive signal is not easily managed if efficiency is to be maintained.

What one can do is to modulate the power supply feeding the amplifier instead.

Remembering that a PSK31 signal consists of two parts - the amplitude modulation and the phase shift - we can split these two signals in the modulator.  The first part, amplitude modulation,  may be done by varying the supply voltage of the output amplifier stage.  The second part, phase modulation, may also be done early in the path of the drive signal simply by flipping the phase of the RF signal under computer control.  In order to keep the signal "clean" all we really need to do is to time the flipping of the phase with the amplitude being brought to zero so that we don't transmit the broadband "click" that would otherwise occur when we did this abrupt phase shift.  The schematic of this transmitter is depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 5:
The phase diagram of the signal
produced by the "Amplitude
Modulator" MedFER PSK31
beacon transmitter.  The phase
shift is precise and the intermodulation
products are well within the tolernaces
dictated by good operating practice.

In this circuit the frequency-determining crystal oscillator operates at four times the transmitter frequency, or around 6.8 MHz in the case of the MedFER transmitter.  During construction it was observed that at around 1.7 MHz it was was easier to achieve Class-E operation at this power level with a drive waveform that had a 25% duty cycle so a 74HC4017 counter was used, wired as a divide-by-four giving two 25% duty cycle outputs, 180 degrees apart.  To select which of these signals were to be used a simple MUX and driver was constructed using four NAND gates, this time being designed so that the same amount of propagation delay would occur during either phase to eliminate the upside-down "Vee" seen in Figure 2.

The PWM signal was generated using simple R/C filtering in the same way as it was for the balanced modulator circuit, but this time op amps were used to set the offset and gain (or "span") so that the baseband waveform could be precisely adjusted in amplitude and so that when the baseband signal went to zero, the output power from the Class-E circuit would as well, compensating for the voltage offset of the series modulating transistor, emitter-follower Q4.  The output transistor, Q3, is a low-power MOSFET wired into a simple L/C "tank" circuit that is tuned to result in the coincidence of the zero crossing of the drain voltage and the transistor being turned back on by the 25% duty cycle drive signal.  Multiple taps are provided on the tank coil, making it easy to set both the output power and match it appropriately to the load presented by the resistance seen at the loading coil.

Figure 6:
Loading coil used to match the transmitter output to the
feedpoint impedance.  This coil is wound using 3/8"
copper tubing and uses a variometer inside the coil
to provide a low-loss means of adjusting the inductance.

For modulation the PIC produces a semi-sine waveform that looks very similar to one "cycle" on the double-frequency output of a full-wave diode rectifier and when this waveform amplitude is taken to "zero" another output of the PIC causes a phase switch to occur.  It is in this way that the BPSK modulation is broken into two parts - the phase change and the modulation envelope - and we are able to use a highly efficient, non-linear amplifier for the output.

After constructing this circuit I later learned that a similar scheme was applied to amateur satellites (starting with OSCAR 7) that included linear transponders.  In order conserve precious power, the linear transponders were constructed using the "HELAPS" (High Efficiency Linear Amplifier using Parametric Synthesis) system where the amplitude and phase components of multiple signals in the satellite's linear passband were converted into their phase and amplitude components, allowing both energy-saving class-C RF amplifiers and DC-DC switching converters to be used, the end result being a faithful, amplified reproduction of the input signal with a lower power budget that would have otherwise been required. This system was proposed by Dr. Karl Meinzer, DJ4ZC, and you can read about it on the AMSAT.DL web site here - link.

Note:

This is an extremely simple example of "Polar Modulation" in the sense that the angle of the RF waveform is modulated separately from the amplitude (e.g. length of the vector.)  Since this is BPSK, the only choices for angle are "0" and "180" degrees but the amplitude must still be applied in a manner that forms a sine wave when demodulated.

Where is it now?

This beacon was mounted in its enclosure on the roof of my house in 1999 and a rather large loading coil (see Figure 6) was constructed to match its output impedance to the top-hatted 3 meter vertical antenna  - and it is there to this day.  While not regularly used, it still works, provided that the tuning of the loading coil variometer is checked before operation and wasps are chased out of it (they do not go in when it is operating!)  Since the beacon was constructed, more broadcast stations have taken to the air in the "new" AM segment, but its operating frequency - nominally 1704.965 kHz - is just a few 10s of Hertz below the top edge of the band, as far away from QRM as is possible.

In the past the BPSK31 signal from this beacon has been copied during the daylight hours at a distance of 75 air miles (approx. 120km) and it had been copied in various places in the western U.S. at night.  This beacon has since been modified to be externally on-off keyed so that "QRSS" (low-speed Morse with multi-second "dit" lengths) could be sent in addition to PSK31 allowing even greater distances to be spanned under more diverse conditions.
 
I haven't done much with the code for this transmitter other than add a few features when it was ported to the (then) newer PIC16F84.  Needless to say, there are more modern devices available that contain hardware that would have simplified the design such as that to generate a much higher frequency and higher resolution PWM signal and perhaps, one day, I'll investigate their use.

For more information on this and related projects - including schematics, various applications, more pictures and some source code, visit the "CT Medfer Beacon" web page - link and related pages linked from there.

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This page stolen from "ka7oei.blogspot.com".