Highest Frequency

Thread Starter

darenw5

Joined Feb 2, 2008
45
For all tinkerers who like to push the limits...

What is the highest frequency signal you've managed to generate from circuitry built yourself? Merely applying power to a pre-made oscillator module or a radio doesn't count, and no fair microwaving your lunch and claiming that. From a circuit of discrete components that wouldn't oscillate on their own. Whether for radio purposes or otherwise.

Is it fairly easy to get into the higher realms of microwaves? Has anyone at a more or less hobbyist/tinkerer level ever gotten up into THz?

If you have an interesting story about any such attempts., please tell!

Personally, many years ago i was messing around with some 74LS series TTL chips, and got an inverter with a tiny handmade inductor and using stray capacitance to oscillate at somewhere over 30MHz. Unimpressive by radio tinkering standards, but it was really pushing digital logic for the time.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
I used to build coffee can down coverters, which had a 2.25 GHz VCO that was tuned by triming the PC boards. They were kits, but nothing was preassembled. They used a 1 pound metal coffee can as a resonant cavity with an antenna in it (made from scratch from semirigid 50 ohm coax, the thin high frequency stuff with a solid metal jacket and solid wire core) and down converted a microwave TV station to channel 3.

Does that count?
 

bertus

Joined Apr 5, 2008
22,270
Hello,

About 30 years ago I have used 10 Ghz transmitters as a HAM (radio amateur).
Those where made with waveguides and gunn diodes.

Greetings,
Bertus
 

scubasteve_911

Joined Dec 27, 2007
1,203
One time I made a switching converter from scratch, it ran at a whopping 50KHz!

Seriously, the highest frequency I used in a design was 915MHz (ISM band requirements), which is nothing compared to what most others have done.

Steve
 
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