[VHFcontesting] FT897's, IF radios, etc

[Duane - N9DG]

Very good analysis. I discovered many of the same items you wrote about, and because of that I have been an all transverter operation for over 7 years now. One item that you didn't cover in your excellent post is the role that the rather poor phase noise performance of the DC-daylight radios have on the VHF+ bands. That was perhaps the first eye opening observation for me when I got my first transverter that was coupled to an all analog LO IF radio. On that band (222) the signals just plain stood out from the noise vs. the other bands where there was always a lot of internal "radio noise" mixed in with the signals. Within 2 years of that discovery I was all transverters on 50-432 and all the imported multimodes all sit idle for my VHF weak signal work.

While transverters may be more work to setup initially, the pay off in the long run is well worth the effort. Especially so for fixed station ops. By having gone to all transverters it has allowed me to have more than 1 RX per band, and to be able to do so without a lot of complexity since I could easily feed the additional RX's from the transverter's RX IF outputs. And now adding SDR panadapters and waterfalls to all of my bands will be a comparatively simple excercise to accomplish as well. Too bad it is one of those back burner projects because of all the non-ham radio stuff that has me busy for now..

Duane
N9DG