{"id":10403,"date":"2012-02-09T09:42:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T22:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/the-parasaki-dl3pbs-amazing-all-diode-transceiver\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T04:24:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:24:41","slug":"the-parasaki-dl3pbs-amazing-all-diode-transceiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/the-parasaki-dl3pbs-amazing-all-diode-transceiver\/","title":{"rendered":"The Parasaki: DL3PB’s Amazing All Diode Transceiver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>JBOD! FB!<\/span>
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Hi folks,<\/span>
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I’d like to share with you a long-cherished dream, that recently came true, forty years after I came to read about hams using tunnel diodes to make QSOs when I was aged twelve or so:<\/span><\/div>\n

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Finally I managed a first skywave QSO with my PARASAKI-transceiver, an ‘all diode’ rig: Christophe\/F8DZY replied to my very first call on 20m band in REF-contest last weekend. I was running 2mW into<\/strong> a temporary vertical dipole on my balcony. Distance between us is 918km – obviously OM Christophe has excellent ears.<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n

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Those interested in the cruel details of my circuit, please find attached a schematic and a photo of the pretty ugly setup. The circuit is designed straight-forward with exception of the parametric VXO, derived from Mike\/AA1TJ’s famous Paraceiver<\/em> design. (see http:\/\/fhs-consulting.com\/aa1tj\/paraceiver.html<\/a><\/span> )<\/div>\n

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The low impedance of the high peak-current tunnel diodes make it very difficult to built a really crystal controlled oscillator rather than an LC-oscillator, synchronized by the crystal more or less, at least on the higher SW-bands. The Parametric VXO provides a crystal-stable, chirp-free signal on expense of an output power of two milliwatts only instead of ten, but with an amazing spectral purity, no need for a low pass filter or such. Of course it sounds pretty cool making a QSO with a ‘bunch of diodes’ and a parametrically excited crystal, but believe me or not, I’d preferred to bring that full ten milliwatt into the air – on the other hand that approach allowed to tune the rig a bit ( ~ 5kHz\/per xtal), which turned out to be much more valuable than a few milliwatts more while being ‘rock-bound’.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The receiver in its ‘gain-less’ version works fine for strong signals – while listening to QRP(p) stations, the moderate gain of the audio amplifier helps a lot. A comfortable frequency shift between receive and transmit is realized by the 5\u00b5H inductor at the LO-port of the mixer, with little effect on sensitivity.
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Thanks for the bandwidth, OMs, won’t bother again you with such mails, unless I make a cross-pond QSO with that rig ( not that likely ) or any skywave QSO with homemade semiconductors ( probably impossible )…<\/span><\/div>\n

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72!<\/span><\/div>\n

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Peter\/DL3PB<\/span><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a>Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a>Our Book Store: http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JBOD! FB! Hi folks, I’d like to share with you a long-cherished dream, that recently came true, forty years after I came to read about hams using tunnel diodes to make QSOs when I was aged twelve or so: Finally I managed a first skywave QSO with my PARASAKI-transceiver, an ‘all diode’ rig: Christophe\/F8DZY replied … Continue reading “The Parasaki: DL3PB’s Amazing All Diode Transceiver”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,95,85,87,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aa1tj","category-germany","category-minimalist-radio","category-qrp","category-rainey-michael"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10406,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10403\/revisions\/10406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}