Hi All,
I have a few radios which have 50kcs I.F chains. Not wanting to leave well enough alone, I'd like to explore aligning these units.
I don't have an r.f. signal generator that goes down to to 50kcs, only 100kcs. Is there another way to do the alignment?
Thanks and stay safe, Roland.
Consider a TinySA. It does many things, but is a cheap ($59) and highly accurate signal generator that will easily do 50 KHz. You can pump out an unmodulated or modulated signal. Drawback is that you can't (at least for now) set the signal level in microvolts -- but you can reduce it by various db. The TinySA isn't my main signal generator, but gets used a lot. A couple of hints on the TinySA: 1) don't buy if off of Amazon -- there are many fakes. A good source is R&L Electronics. 2) Always use a DC block and external attenuators.
I have found the TinySA to be an invaluable part of my toolset -- it's like Felix the Cat's magic bag, only about the size of a cell phone. You can check oscillator frequencies in a flash by attaching the external whip antenna and waving it near the oscillator tuning cap.
The official specs on it say the output range is 100 KHz to 350 MHz. That's actually not true -- see the photo for proof. I've run my TinySA down to very low frequencies and had no difficulty whatsoever. And verified to be accurate against a frequency counter. The 100 KHz bottom end is only a specification, not a limit.
More information: https://www.tinysa.org
Steve, KW4H