[ARC5] HF Converter - feeding mixer with a square wave?

[millerke6f at aol.com]

Hi Again, Tom
    With all the interest in OLD things and the current conversations on Mixers which in itself is a misnomer in that while they can produce outputs that are both the injection signal and the signal to be "Mixed" they are by their nature "Modulators" and can produce lots of products depending on the design or configuration.  
    One "Mixer" modulator not mentioned in any of the postings is the venerable Beam Deflection Tube AKA  7360.  Often touted in the 60s as the perfect balanced modulator as well as a great balanced  RF "Mixer."  Aside from their sensitivity to magnetic fields (60 Hz in most cases). they offered a lot of promise or was it mainly just hyped.  I used a few of them back in the early 60s to design and build a nifty little SSB exciter.  A pair in the phasing ssb generator on 1650 KHz and a single unit as a balanced mixer using a transplanted ARC-5  5 MHz vfo for an 80-40 meter unit. While the SSB suppression was limited by the audio phase shift network (B and W  2Q4) it served me quite well for a few years.
Thoughts?
Bob, KE6F


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Lee <tomlee at ee.stanford.edu>
To: MICHAEL ST ANGELO <mstangelo at comcast.net>
Cc: ARC-5 List <ARC5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thu, Mar 17, 2022 12:16 pm
Subject: Re: [ARC5] HF Converter - feeding mixer with a square wave?

I wish people would stop repeating the claim that mixers are inherently nonlinear. That’s completely false. It is true that nonlinear things can produce mixing, but that’s a side effect, not an inherent property!

Good mixers have to be linear. You want the IF output to be proportional to the RF input.

We treat mixer nonlinearity in much the same way as we treat amplifier nonlinearity. It is an undesirable property and considerable effort is expended to minimize it.

Tom

Sent from my iThing; please forgive the typos and brevity

> On Mar 17, 2022, at 11:39, MICHAEL ST ANGELO <mstangelo at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Bob,
> 
> Enjoyed that article and the one about the Si5351 Quadrature oscillator. Have the tried feeding the Si5351 to the SA612 instead of an Epson? It gives the the ability of easily changing frequency. 
> 
> The SA612 and Si5351, what a pair for experimenters.
> 
> Mike N2MS
> 
>> On 03/17/2022 1:05 PM Robert Nickels <ranickels at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On 3/17/2022 11:10 AM, Phillip Carpenter wrote:
>>> Can you please share the circuit diagram of your universal converter board that you used with the BC-453 receiver?
>> 
>> I've added an article about it to my website: https://tinyurl.com/mrj7rndd
>> 
>> The 4.7uH/100pF values shown work for 40 meters, or calculate your own - 
>> I use a 10uH fixed inductor and 150-180pf capacitor for 75-80 meters.
>> 
>> 73, Bob W9RAN
>> 
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