Using si5351 for generation the carrier and the band LO signals for Drake TR-3



K9SUL



One of the most common failure modes in the Drake TR-3 is the failure of one or both sideband filter, which is also called "soup can" filter. The soup can contains a pair of 4-pole crystal lattice filter and a rotary switch for selecting the filter between X and non-X. The shape factor of these filters tend to be better than now more common 4-pole crystal ladder filters. It was also used in the early version of TR-4. When a sideband filter fails, the typical remedy is to replace both with a pair of used TR-4 (blue or grey) filters, if you are fortunate enough to get them. A more expensive solution will be to buy new filters from Inrad ($130 each at the time of writing). They are different in the topology and impedance from the original lattice filter, so a care must be taken to adapt the new filters to the existing circuit.

If one sideband filter is still okay or you obtained one filter, you can still make TR-3 work by shifting the carrier frequency. Since I usually acquire old rigs in a bad state and fix them, all my TR-3s had failed filters. On one unit I first tried using crystals and a realy to shift carrier, but eventually replaced it with a microcontroller-controlled PPLL clock generator. The si570 is the best choice since its signal quality is excellent. si5351 has a bit more phase noise, etc., but can generate three distinct signals at the same time. I chose it because several band crystals were bad too. Some are not working, other have drifted too far.





I used the si5351 board from etherkit.com by NT7S. There are other designs. E.g. the Adafruit one is much smaller. For the control, Teensy 2.0 was selected because I already had one for another project. The cost of the two borads is less than $30.



I selected a used KVG 9MHz USB filter for this mod. It's center frequency is about 9001.5kc and the bandwidth is about 3kc. I wrote the code to switch the carrier between about 9000.0kc and 9003.0kc. In the X-CW mode, it becomes 9001.5kc. For real CW work, 600-800Hz shift would be better, but I intended this to be a sideband-only rig.



I tested the carrier switching by connecting one of the si5351 output to the grid of 6GX6. If the carrier is the only signal to generate, the mod is very simple. I have an example here. Generating the band LO signal needs a bit more work.

The sideband switching can be easily sensed from the sideband selection rotary switch. All one needs is to ground a pin when one sideband is selected. Sensing X-CW is also easy. The thin coax runs from the front panel to the carrier crystal will do the job. The coax is used as a capacitor for shifting carrier frequency in X-CW. This is normally shorted and becomes open in X-CW, perfect for sensing through a digital I/O pin. This coax was replaced with a capacitor and a relay in TR-4. The relay actuation line can be repurposed for the X-CW sensing.

If the band LO signal is to be also generated, the prefered location of the si5351 may be different and the wiring will be different too. I will describe what I did as best I can.



I decided to mount the boards right where the band crystals were. That way I don't have to run five band sensing lines. I first constructed an adapter.



Then mounted the boards and connected the I/O pins. When a band is selected, the corresponding crystal is connected to the cathode of V1a. I simple moved it to ground, so that the band sensing works through the digital I/O pins. The output signal is connected to the cathode. There will be no input for 20m/80m.



Since the generated carrier needs to be fed to 6GX6 all the way in the back, I decided to use the existing thin coax for it, rather than running a new cable.



That involved removing the front panel and unmounting the mode switch. I unsoldered the coas from the switch and soldered a pair of regular wires in place for the X-CW sensing. This end of the coax was connected to the carrier output of si5351. One of the newly soldered wire was grounded and the other one was connected to an I/O pin.



This picture shows the mounted and hard-wired KVG filter and the sideband selector.



Everything seemed working fine until I tried to transmit. It did transmit, but the power output was only about 30-50%. As an easy solution I ended up installing a buffer amp I already had. There might be a better solution for this. The output impedance of this amp is 200 ohms.



The board has a USB port for reprogramming. For this particular unit, I chose to supply the 5V externally, so it is possible to do in-circuit reprogramming. When developing and testing, I can disconnect the external power source and use USB to power this module. I can observe the effect of reprogramming right away.



This is where I added the power jack. There already was a hole drilled by a previous owner. I just enlarged it. I am using a 5V linear power wall wart that was originally for an external IOmega ZIP drive.



In-circuit programming in action.



I tried to make the dial calibration least painful. Since I don't operate 75/80m much, I adjusted the band LO, so that they all align from 40m LSB to 10m USB. Only on 80m LSB, it will be off about 3kc.

Links

  • Teensy USB Development Board. There are plenty others that can be used with Arduino.
  • si5351 board from Adafruit
  • Etherkit Si5351A Breakout Board (NT7S)
  • Arduino si5351 library by NT7S
  • K9SUL's TR-3/4 signal generator code. May not be up-to-date.