HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL GENERATOR

Schematic:

Notes:

A tapped-coil Colpitts oscillator is used at Q1 to provide four tuning ranges from 1.7 to 3.1 MHz, 3.0 to 5.6 MHz, 5.0 to 12 MHz and 11.5 to 31 MHz. A Zener diode (D2) is used at Q1 to lower the operating voltage of the oscillator. A small value capacitor is used at C5 to ensure light coupling to the tuned circuit. Q2 is a source-follower buffer stage. It helps to isolate the oscillator from the generator-output load. The source of Q2 is broadly tuned by means of RFC1. Energy from Q2 is routed to a fed-back, broadband class-A amplifier. A 2 dB attenuator is used at the output of T1 to provide a 50 ohm termination for Q3 and to set the generator-output impedance at 50 ohms. C16, C17 and RFC2 form a brute-force RF decoupling network to keep the generator energy from radiating outside the box on the 12 V supply.

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