Monday, October 8, 2012

Hydrogen Line 1.42Ghz RF Front End - Radio Astronomy

After finally completing the power supply for my RF front end last week, I spent some time tonight assembling the power supply onto the back of the feedhorn assembly and wiring all of the amplifiers and downconverter to the necessary voltage supplies. Here is a look of what it currently looks like:


From the front, you have the feedhorn, LNA, 1420Mhz cavity filter, downconverter, low pass filter, second LNA, then the power supply on the very back. Now that it is completed, I performed some testing tonight to check operation, sensitivity, and power supply stability. So far everything is looking good, the video below shows its operation on my bench for testing purposes: