Crystal Tester Trouble!

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Crystal Tester Trouble!

Elecraft Reflector
Hello Group!

I have built two crystal testers from the circuit shown on page 5, Appendix E of the K1 construction manual. The components used were exact values. The circuit works fine with crystals from 10MHz and upwards but good 80m crystals will not fire up the oscillator. I have tried a fair few good 80m QRP crystals (standard package) but no joy. Has anyone had the same problem? Any ideas how to solve it please?

Many thanks, kind regards

Steve M0ECS
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Re: Crystal Tester Trouble!

Don Wilhelm-4
Steve,

If you have a large value trimpot at the output, that could cause
problems.  Try a pot in the range of 500 to 1k.  You may have to change
the values of the two capacitors in the base/emitter part of the circuit
for use at a lower frequencies.  The capacitors control the feedback, so
some experimenting may be in order - either too much feedback or too
little can cause a failure to oscillate.

Remember that oscillator is intended to develop a huge output that is
handy for troubleshooting - the output is easily measured with an RF
Probe and DMM.  If you want a low level oscillator better suited for
alignment purposes, I would suggest that you use a circuit similar to
that used in the Elecraft XG1 or XG2 - download the manuals and take a look.

73,
Don W3FPR

Elecraft Reflector wrote:
> Hello Group!
>
> I have built two crystal testers from the circuit shown on page 5, Appendix E of the K1 construction manual. The components used were exact values. The circuit works fine with crystals from 10MHz and upwards but good 80m crystals will not fire up the oscillator. I have tried a fair few good 80m QRP crystals (standard package) but no joy. Has anyone had the same problem? Any ideas how to solve it please?
>
>  
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