Archive for December, 2013

902 Orion RX

A long time ago I wanted to make a 33cm Ham repeater using nothing but Orion radios… the 900Mhz Orion will TX in 927 just fine but I was told no Orion will RX in 902… so I decided to try and modify the 800Mhz Orion to RX in 902Mhz because I wanted an all-Orion repeater…

I honestly can’t remember much of what I did seeing as this was 6~7 years ago but it all began with some trial and error (mostly error)

IMG_2214 (Medium)

Playing with caps till I managed to get the VCO Line to 5v…

IMG_2216 (Medium)

Success!

Copy of IMG_2224 (Medium)

Obviously this isn’t an ideal part but it did the job… solder in place…

IMG_2210 (Medium)

Result…

Finally ended up integrating it into a little /\/\otorola desktop repeater cabinet with a home-made dual radio cable that also goes to a DB-25 to interface with a CAT-2oo repeater controller (not pictured was used later in another repeater) along with a 900Mhz Orion for TX along with a small power supply and a mobile duplexer… the 800Mhz PA was removed to save a bit of weight… used the flex ribbon from the PA for it’s DB37 interface and a coax pigtail from an MTX or something like that can’t remember…

2013-12-10 06.34.42

800Mhz Orion RX’ing 902Mhz

2013-12-10 06.34.49

Since it was setup in a dual-radio config if you TX in Talk Around the 900Mhz Orion will show RX’ing

2013-12-10 06.38.27

Home-Made Dual Radio cable along with the DB-25 connector for going to the CAT-200 Repeater Controller (missing)

Two things that are not really mentioned is you must remove/replace (or in my case just bypass) the filter on the RX side or the radio will be incredibly deaf… bypassing the filter the radio is about -118 ~ -120 or so which is not bad… additionally if you do use a disk cap (ideally you would use a proper cap) you need to glue it down with some hot glue or something if not the radio will be incredibly micro phonic…

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013 Amateur Radio No Comments