| Some views of a Sienna as it is assembled |
These pictures were taken by our
builder-for-hire, Alan Wilcox, and DZKit staff |
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Here, seven of the eleven pieces of the chassis have been
assembled. Note the small PC board attached to the back panel. This is an
RS-232 interface board that connects to the internal controller. If you
buy the internal PC, it mounts in this compartment instead, which adds
Ethernet, USB, VGA, PS/2 and COM ports to the rig. When the PC is added, a
special internal power supply kit is also provided, which mounts on the
chassis bottom next to the speaker at the top of this picture. Also note
the internal fan in the center compartment. This fan draws air in from the
front panel/controller compartment, providing cooling air for the direct
digital synthesis chips and vacuum fluorescent display. It exhausts
through the center transmitter compartment, providing cooling for the 10W
finals. Airflow in the Sienna has been engineered, not added as an
afterthought.
Also note the large openings on the bottom. The one in the PC
compartment provides access to the PC's memory. The others, in the
receiver compartment, provide bottom access to the snap-in IF filters.
Finally, note the stereo 1.5W speakers, which provide plenty of volume.
Photo courtesy of Alan Wilcox. [ assembly time: 2.5 hrs ] |
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This board contains DC power conditioning and
distribution. When you add the transmitter you also add the SWR/power meter.
This board also holds the optional antenna tuner.
Sienna has
reverse polarity, overvoltage, undervoltage and overcurrent protection.
Resettable fuses protect the main rig and PC. A back panel accessible fuse
protects the 100W amplifier. 8-Amp Panasonic relays are used in the tuner
and for antenna switching. Two relays are used for antenna switching, one
for A and one for B, providing better isolation than some rigs. The SWR/power
meter has two ranges, one for 0-10W and one for 0-100W operation.The
tuner option has not been installed on this board. When you buy the tuner, the
diagonal wire is removed and the additional parts are added to the board.
Photo courtesy of Alan Wilcox. [ assembly time: 5.2 hrs ] |
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This small board provides DC
power for the optional embedded PC. As mentioned above, it installs on the chassis bottom
next to the left speaker if the PC option is purchased. Power transistors and regulators attach to the
bottom of the chassis, providing excellent heatsinking.
[ assembly time: 0.5 hrs ] |
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The receiver compartment has three stacked boards. This
one is mounted on the bottom, and is the IF filter board. The filters,
Inrad and/or Collins filters, snap in from the bottom. Four 50-ohm RF
cables attach this board to the receiver. Filter isolation, passband
flatness and skirts are excellent and very close to the ideal as shown in
Inrad measurements of the filters at the Inrad web site. Inrad and Collins
filters mount on Yaesu FT-1000 style "C" boards. The S-100 and
SF-100 models
(receiver-only) include one 4-pole Inrad 2.4kHz SSB filter at the
9MHz IF and one 20kHz ceramic filter at the 455kHz IF. Many more choices
are available - see www.inrad.com for
details.
Photo
courtesy of Alan Wilcox [ assembly time: 4 hrs ] |
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This is the receive bandpass filter, preamp and attenuator
board, which is the middle board in the three-board receiver stack. Eleven pre-assembled snap-in bandpass filters are provided. These
filters are switched in and out via the pre-loaded GaAsFET switches (in
this photo, the small pre-loaded ICs located just above
and below the filters). These filters can be bypassed via a menu selection
to help extract the last dB of weak signal on a fading band. We call it PassiveSignalBoostTM (PSBTM).
Note the switch on the left side. This is a calibration aid. During
calibration, you feed the transmitter's BFO signal to the main antenna
input on this board, and an on-board attenuator reduces the amplitude to 50uV to allow you to cal the S-meter.
(The transmitter oscillators are present all the time, even on the
S-100 and SF-100.)
Two 10dB RF preamps and two 10dB RF attenuators are also present on
this board.
Photo courtesy of Alan Wilcox. [ assembly time: 4.4 hrs ] |
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The top board in the receiver stack is the receiver
itself: a triple conversion SSB/CW/AM
receiver with an integrated mixer/FM receiver chip providing a separate
path for FM receive and wideband 455kHz IF output. A 4-pole 70.000MHz
20kHz crystal roofing filter is included standard, upgradeable to a
high-performance Inrad 4.5kHz 6-pole 70.455MHz roofing
filter (shown). A high performance noise blanker with 3
pulse widths and variable threshold is also present. Finally, stereo
audio, with a multi-input audio mixer rounds out this board. All
surface-mount parts are pre-loaded, so don't let the density of this board
scare you! There are about 100 non-SMT parts that you add.
[ assembly time: 3.9 hrs ] |
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The transmitter board is a single conversion SSB/CW/AM/FM
transmitter with 10W finals. Also present here is a variable compression RF speech processor. A 7-element Chebyshev variable bandwidth SSB filter and
a fixed 6kHz AM crystal filter
are used in the IF. The transmitter's partially pre-assembled bandpass filters
and heatsink for the finals are attached to the back of this board. This
board operates completely independently of the receiver, allowing full
duplex operation, very useful for satellite work. All small
surface-mount parts are pre-loaded, so don't let the density of this board
scare you!
[ assembly time: 12 hrs ] |
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Here, the DCD/Tuner board has been installed in the
chassis. At this point, the Sienna is ready to be turned on and the
internal power supply voltage regulators checked. Note the gas discharge
tubes attached directly to the antenna connectors. These are one of many
protective devices to keep your Sienna working fine in less than ideal
circumstances. Photo courtesy of Alan
Wilcox [ assembly/test time: 0.9 hr ] |
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If you purchased the front panel, the next step is to
build the front panel PC board and attach it with the display, meters and
pre-assembled controller to the front panel sheet metal. If you did not
buy the front panel, you still must install the controller to the blank
front panel sheet metal. Photo courtesy
of Alan Wilcox [ assembly time: 4.5 hr ] |
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The next step is to attach cables to the front panel
assembly, attach the front panel assembly to the chassis and turn it on.
If you have purchased the full front panel (shown), you can experiment with the controls.
In either case you can communicate with an external PC via RS-232. This step-by-step process helps
you build confidence that you're doing it right! Photo courtesy of Alan
Wilcox [ assembly time: 4.2 hr ] |
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Now it's time to start putting some RF boards in the
Sienna. The IF filter board mounts on the bottom of the stack, with IF
filters snapped in from the bottom. A special test board connects to the
board to verify its operation before you stack the next one on top. Photo courtesy of Alan
Wilcox [ assembly time: 0.5 hr ] |
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Once the IF filter board is mounted, the bandpass
filter/preamp board stacks on top. A special test board connects to the
board to verify its operation before you stack the next one on top. Photo courtesy of Alan
Wilcox [ assembly time: 0.5 hr ] |
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The final step of receiver integration is to stack the receiver board
on the other two and connect cables. You're now ready to turn on and calibrate the
receiver using the transmitter's BFO as a calibrated frequency source. The
S-meter (either the one on the front panel or the value displayed on the
PC's rig control software, or using a voltmeter to the S-meter terminals) is used as a relative signal strength meter during cal.
Screwdriver adjustments are made according to a simple procedure, using
just an external voltmeter.
Since the speakers are now active, you can also experiment with the keyer
(included even with the S-100/SF-100 receiver!).
Note the use of high-quality MIL-SPEC M17/113-RG316 50-ohm cable to
interconnect the RF and IF sections of the boards. These cables are
pre-assembled and labeled for easy integration. Photo courtesy of Alan
Wilcox [ assembly time: 2.2 hr ] |
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If you purchased the transmitter, it is inserted into the center
compartment and the cables connected. There are only two steps to
transmitter calibration -- carrier null and RF power calibration, both
very straightforward. Then just place the cover on the unit, attach the knobs
(if you purchased the front panel) and you're ready to operate! If you
purchased the 100W amplifier, that's the next step. The amp slides into
the compartment beneath the tuner/dcd board.
Photo courtesy of Alan
Wilcox [ assembly time: 1.4 hr ]
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