Improved MEPT Enclosure

I’ve been pretty busy lately, but I drip to the hardware store with the XYL produced a PVC enclosure that looked perfect for my ongoing MEPT (manned experimental propagation transmitter) projects. I didn’t want to buy it (it was a little pricey by my standards, at $6 USD, which is about the total cost of the transmitter!) but the wife convinced me and I’m glad she did! I intended it to replace the styrofoam enclosure I had been using, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and drilled holes in the box and mounted screws through them. While electrically this is a wonderful way to add antenna connections, thermally it was a bad idea. The main point of the enclosure was to be temperature stable! Oh well. I put the whole thing in the Styrofoam and as a test, I’m leaving it outside tonight. I can’t wait to see how it goes! Here are some photos of the project.

Update: Even when being housed outdoors when temperature fluctuations vary greatly between day and night, this MEPT is surprisingly stable! When I open the box, it’s very warm inside, so I am thinking that the voltage regulators and the MOSTFETs of the PA are heating the device nicely. Here’s a capture spanning about 2 hours. The vertical height of each “V” is about 10Hz, so I estimate that for this span of time, drift is <1Hz. However, I do believe that long term (day to day) frequency stability is still not optimal, but only time will tell.

Signal report: briefly, this is my signal in Alaska courtesy of KL7UK. My signal is the V-shaped one near the bottom: