Performance: You gets what you gets!

The performance of this radio to say the least has been remarkable if only in the sense that my idea for a Tri-Band Radio actually works. Does it work well? For the most part the answer is an unqualified YES! I have received many excellent audio reports, the PTO is extremely stable and it "hears" very well.

It has been used on all three bands and many DX contacts have been made esepcially on 40 and 20M. Imagine my surprise when I worked Germany on 40M running about 150 Watts with my small outboard Solid State amplifier. Countries worked on 20M starting from May 2009 include: Romania, Roratonga, Germany, Belgium, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Northern Ireland, Slovenia, Canada, Azore Islands, Norway, Italy, Finland and Russia using the outboard amplifier. The radio runs about 6 watts out on 40 and 20M and 4 watts on 15M. But this was only possible after I had changed out the driver and pre-driver stages --several times. Initially the output was much lower on 20 and 15M. Some of this was due in part to having the stage favor the lower frequencies and in the case of 15M installing a new Band Pass Filter. I made an error in one of may calculations and some of the filter components were not correct. That has been corrected. On 15M two stateside contacts were made when essentially the band was closed. In the CQ WW contest, Oct 25, 2009 the following countries were worked on 15 Meters running 100 Watts with the outboard amplifier: Aruba, Turks & Caicos Islands and Brazil

I have made several QRP contacts including working Alaska on 40M running only 4 watts. Several contacts with the Mid-West were made on 20M running only 3 watts! As of June 2009 several sunspots have been sighted and that could mean some band improvements especially on 20 and 15M. Come on sunspots!

There are a few bumps that still need resolution and chief among those is the AGC circuit. Initially an audio derived loop was installed and it was subject to "popping and thumping". My original idea for a dual loop circuit did not work. On May 25th, I completed building a IF dervied AGC circuit designed by W7ZOI that was originally used with a dual gate mosfet multiple stage IF strip. Problem solved! Thanks again Wes!

I had planned to add CW to the radio but have not implemented that feature as it is a little more complex that I initially thought so that is another opportunity.