31 December, 2022

QDX with voltage regulator

Here's my low-band (80m - 20 m) 9 Volt QDX with a voltage regulator. Its only modification is a green rather than a red LED, as I don't like red LEDs to indicate anything but error conditions. 

The power amplifier of the QDX has hardly any built-in protection and can be ruined if run at full power into a poorly matched antenna. It will also easily be ruined if run at a higher voltage than the 9 or 12 Volts one may choose for at build-time.

A recurring theme on the QRPLabs discussion list is how to feed it with the right supply voltage. My solution is an "ZK-4KX CNC DC DC Buck Boost Converter CC CV 0.5-30V 4A Power Module Adjustable Regulated power supply" from AliExpress as shown in the image. It can take any DC voltage between 4.8 and 30 Volts and convert it up or down to the desired value.

I turn it down to 7 Volts for manual tuning of the antenna and up to 9-9.5 Volts in order to achieve near 5 Watts output. If I exceed 10 Volts, the power module is set to turn itself off.

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