[VHFcontesting] 902 vs 903

[Zack Widup]

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004, Lee Scott - AA1YN wrote:

> 
> I've been through the dilemma and started with a 902.  The activity in the 
> eastern US is on 903MHz but in the west, it is on 902.  There has been a 
> lot of talk (no action) on switching the weak signal calling freq to 902 
> but it hasn't happened yet. The reason I purchased a 902 rig was that I was 
> using a DSP-10 for the IF which made everything transparent. When my DSP 
> went south a year ago, I bought an FT817 which made 903 on a 902 rig 
> inconvenient as I needed to have the IF at 145MHZ for 903 and 144MHz for 1296.
> 
> The only difference between the two rigs is a crystal so if you pick up a 
> 903 and later on down the road find you need 902, you just re-crystal the 
> rig. That is what I did to get a 903 rig but I saved the crystal for 902.
> 

When I originally built a 33 cm transverter, I got a crystal for 144 = 902 
MHz, then found out that everyone else around here was using 903 MHz.  So 
I got another crystal to make 144 = 903.

I may build another transverter with the old crystal for 902 and 
phase-lock it to a 10 MHz reference for accuracy.  With the IF rig I'm 
using (a modified HTX-100), there's no reason I can't program one of the 
memories for 145 MHz to get on 903 and just switch memories to change to 
the higher bands.

Zack W9SZ