[Lowfer] HiFER DER 13,553.10

[Dale Rice]

I have finished rebuilding HiFER: DER  and it looks pretty stable so far.
The old one was getting pretty tired. The old XTAL was pretty flaky and
tired of being opened up and repaired as well as being a 27 MHz item needing
a divider.
I found a rather nice 13 MHz CB ch. 13T with no spurs and a good freq./temp.
curve.

I was also tired of using up several dollars worth of Duracells to power it
so I put low power drain high on the list of requirements.

The IDer was redesigned using CMOS and old-fashioned diode programming and
the power drain went down so far that it literally has to be shorted out to
stop it.   HI

Key clicks were a problem with the old one operating from the shack and
trying to receive at the same time so a modulator stage was added at a
slight expense in current drain.
The modulator allows for a slow rise and fall time as opposed to just keying
the oscillator, as well as allowing for power adjustment.

A thermistor was snagged from an old cell-phone battery and attached to the
XTAL and two orange RadioShack LEDs were used as varicaps in a temperature
compensation circuit that keeps it within 10 Hertz at reasonable
temperatures.

It is currently set for 13,553.100 sending DER at about 12 wpm.

The antenna is still a ground plane with 9 radials about 20 feet up (Idea
from description of Jim Mandavilles' AZ beacon.)

Dale Rice
KC7YKU
Williams, Oregon