The Fort Tuthill 80 – A Direct Conversion Transceiver For 80M

A week ago, the Arizona ScQRPions released their Fort Tuthill 80M TX/RX kit. I’d been keen to build it ever since I became aware of it (thank you AE5X) due to a long standing interest in DC receivers, and the fact that the first transceiver I ever built was also for 80M and also utilized a DC receiver. That was back in the early 1980’s.  I brought that rig with me to the US when I moved here from the UK in 1987 and then fried several of the active devices in it by accidentally connecting the power the wrong way round.  Yes I know – for some reason I didn’t want to use a diode to polarity-protect it (probably didn’t want to lose the 0.6V forward-bias voltage drop).  At the time I was going through a phase of my life in which I was distinctly uninterested in amateur radio, so rather than replace the fried devices, I threw the whole thing out and somewhat regret that decision to this day.  I don’t remember it suffering from any of the problems normally associated with DC receivers – microphony and hum pickup. However, this could very well be a case of my looking through the past at rose-tinted glasses.  As it was the first transceiver I had ever built, it was the apple of my eye, and well, proud parents can be quite good at ignoring flaws in their offspring.

OK, here’s what you get for your $53.  The silvery bag contains the active devices, and you also get 2 sets of decals:

Considering the amount of work that goes into designing something like this, designing the PCB, sourcing and ordering all the parts, as well as bagging them all up ready for delivery to you, the end consumer, $53 is a steal. Dan N7VE, the designer of this transceiver, knows a great deal about active filtering in receivers and has applied his expertise and knowledge to the design. Look here for a presentation he gave on the subject of active filtering in receivers.

A closer look at the board that Dan designed for this radio:

One of the many great things about the internet is that manuals for kits can be more detailed, with more pictures than ever before.  Dan’s manual makes building this little radio a lot of fun, and with the help of the Yahoo Group, expert advice from the designer, or other builders, is not far away.

The build went smoothly.  As tends to be the case with these things, I stayed up all night to finish it off and ended up finally hitting the hay at 9am.  I find that it’s easy to get so engrossed in a project that I’ve barely noticed that it’s something like 3am.  By that time I’m within spitting distance of finishing – or so it seems.  I’m not fast at doing things, tending to get distracted easily by things like the need for coffee breaks, the urge to look at something on the internet etc, so what some might call an 8 hour kit build, is closer to 3 times that for me. Next thing I knew it was 9am, but the board was finished, and all the external connectors temporarily connected:

The board with external connectors temporarily attached. On the far right just above the middle you can see the 2 PA transistors epoxied to the heatsink. Just above that is the trimpot for controlling output power. The VFO toroid is on the far left about 2/3 of the way up the board.

Initial impressions are favorable. Although some of the capacitors are microphonic (to be expected in a DC receiver), I can tell that this is not going to be a problem in use, especially when the board is mounted on standoffs in a case.  The other main problem with DC receivers is the issue of hum pickup.  I’m a little concerned, because I am getting quite a lot of hum pickup through the antenna connection. I’m hoping that enclosing the board in a metal case will help.  An enclosure will be arriving later this week, so we’ll see how that helps.

The receiver is sensitive and VFO stability seems to be good enough for regular usage.  Using my FT-817 as a reference,  I measured about 60Hz of drift in an hour from the VFO after it had already been on for several hours, operating in a room of reasonably constant temperature. I then measured the frequency drift every hour for 6 hours. After 6 hours, the VFO had drifted 90Hz higher than the original frequency; the maximum drift from the original frequency within the 6 hour period was 150Hz. Not bad! I intend to fix the VFO toroid more firmly to the board with a nylon nut, bolt and washer to help improve the resistance of the VFO to physical impact.

At this point, my main concern is that of hum pickup in the receiver.  We’ll see what happens when I’m able to install it in a metal case. To be continued………..

Postscript – nothing better to do with my time this morning than stare lovingly at the PC board and ponder on what a thing of beauty it is:

The board after disconnecting the temporary knobs, switches, power etc and before mounting in a case.

Hum Problem Solved – I haven’t begun to put the FT80 in a case yet, but the hum issue has already been resolved.  The radio was connected to an antenna via an LDG Z11 tuner, which was powered by an unsmoothed wall wart transformer.  On unplugging the wall wart from the wall, the hum all but disappeared.  There is still a very low level of background mains hum, but only at the level you’d hear in a mains powered receiver with a well smoothed power supply. At this point, the radio is very usable in just the current bare board situation; things can only get better when it is installed in a metal case. Dan N7VE made the point that if you mount the board close to the bottom of the case, as the traces are on the bottom of the board, and the top of the board is mainly ground plane, then the traces will be sandwiched between two ground planes. The FT80 looks like it is going to be a very usable little transceiver. I’m really looking forward to when QRP Kits start stocking versions for other bands.