[Fox_Tango] "Fix" circuit on FT-101E speech processor board

[Wiley Sanders]

Thanks Rick,

I have the older board, PB 1494, it does not have the ALC circuitry on it and 
has two VR's for setting the gain with and without the compressor in.

I followed the alignment procedure in the original operator's manual (I have a 
separate one-page document on the processor that has a slightly different but 
equivalent procedure.) The objective of the alignment procedure is basically 
to feed a 1000 Hz tone into the board and set the output level with the 
processor on and off equal to the input level.

I found the gain with the processor on to be wildly over-set - the VR was 
cranked up all the way and the output level was about 160mv using my homemade, 
uncalibrated RF probe. I set VR1 and VR2 to provide an output level equal to 
the input level with compression on and off, and the Mic Gain at 12 o'clock. 
The ALC reading is now between 0.3 and 0.4 for normal speech.

I had a couple of QSOs on 20 after I made the change, and everyone said my 
audio was fine, the test will be on 10 to see if it made any diference on that 
band. My output power is down to about 50W on 20, 15, and 10, measured putting 
a 1000Hz tone into a dummy load. Thats OK if that's a tradeoff good audio. (By 
the way DigiPan provides a clean, useful, uncalibrated, but free audio 
oscillator by way of its "Tune" function.)

My only question is: Is it permissible to maybe allow a little gain in this 
stage? I had no complaints and a few complements about my audio until a few 
days ago, when I altered my antenna and started getting some RF in the shack, 
and I had about 80W output on 20 through 10.

-Wiley KF6IIU