Ham Radio Videos
• Ham Radio HF Noise Test With Boost Converter Power Supply
Added at 2014-02-19 09:07:08
I don't have time right now to design and build my own boost converter so I decided to buy a really cheap and dirty $15 150W boost converter off Amazon (DROK). It's as simple as they come with no filtering other than the standard low lap inductor and capacitors on every switching supply.
This has forced me to learn a bit more about and employ various RFI suppression techniques. I've manually drilled and mounted the converter in an aluminum case, place ferrite beads on the output leads, and place various capacitors to GND/Chassis ground from both the input and output terminals.
Also shown in this video is a dedicated and relatively short RF Chassis ground jumper from my radio to my boost converter case. This helped a LOT!
It's not perfect and most results are empirically driven since I was just winging this project, a lot more can be done but it is a perfectly usable solution right now if you don't mind the occasional spur.
My next task is to dampen the switching MOSFET/Inductor since this converter does ring like crazy with a 1AMP load (RX radio) on it and this underdamped ringing causes a lot of those spurs/noise.