VHF aircraft receiver with squelch ‘This VHF roceiver offers very good porfarm- ance with fey components and covers the whole commorcial air band from just abova 100M to 140MFiz with sensitivity of just a few microvolts, [thas a noise squeleh circuit, forpleasant noise-ree listening a very pleastr- able experience. “Theantenaa is coupled via @10nF capacitor to the bao of transistor Qi, a grounded base buffer stage. 1 isolates tho onfenna from the following stage involving Q2 which acts.as 2 super-regencrative detector. The detector self queriched at around 20kHs via the com! nation of the 15kfLresistorand 1nF eapecitor associated with inductor REC2, Bandpass filter ‘The recovered audio modulation from in- ductor RFC? i fed via emitter follower stage Q3 to op amp stage C1 which acts as a nar row bandpass filter. Itrejects the high quench content of the input signal and any voice modulation. Its output is rectified hy diodes D1 & D2 and filtered by a 1uF capacitor. This ‘hecomes the squelch control valtage for Qa which turns on to roverse-bins diode D3, This provents signal from the emitter of QS from ‘being coupled through D3 to the input of the audio stage, 102 Hence, when signal is present, the receiver “quiets” on receipt of a carrier and squelch ‘voltage to Qs falls, turningit off, Thus thecol- Jectar voltage of Q¢ rises and forward biases ‘Ds to allow the audio signal through to the ‘volume control, VR3. Potentiometer VR2 acts ‘as the squelch control. Winding inductor Lt Inductor 1 is wound on.a3min former with four turns of Imm enamelled copper wire. RECI & RFC2 are standard 10H moulded ‘chokes while VC1 is the FM saction of astand- ard plastic dielectric tuning eapacitor, This ives enough range to tune from 100MHz to 140MHs. All the capacitors in the RF section, should be disk ceramics. Potentiometer VR1 adjusts the bies on the detector (Q2) and rhaxcimarn sonsitivity is at tho point whore the hiss is stableat the earthy ‘end of the adjustment, At this point, about 1.5-2V will appear acroes the 1uF capacitor the squelch control set fully open. This setting will remain fairly constant aver the complete tuning range. When adjusted cor rectly; the squolch will “spit” on background noise. Dayle Edwards, Taylorville, NZ. ($60) Epa: NOM. ETC sliconchip.com.au Deceenen 2008 35