Kuhne MKU 10 G5 3cm Transverter
Dec 10, 2024
For my first experiments on 10GHz I used a homebrew W1GHZ 10GHz transverter with a 432MHz IF. I recently bought a MKU 10 G5 transverter from Kuhne electronic (now part of Alaris Holdings) and plan to install it at the dish along with the DU3T LNA and Kuhne SSPA.
The transverter is small, measuring only 100 x 80 x 14mm, and has two 2.54mm pin headers, a 2 row 4 pin header for power and a 2 row 13 pin header for PTT, monitoring and frequency selection. I’m only planning to use a few of the control connections so I soldered the sockets provided to a double sided prototype board with some screw terminals.
For testing I connected a 13.5V bench power supply, 144MHz signal source, RF power sensor and Leo Bodnar 10MHz Mini GPS reference to the transverter. Everything appears to work correctly.
- Current consumption 300mA on receive, 480mA on transmit
- PLL lock detect on Pin 16 switches to 3.3V when the internal crystal oscillator is locked to an external reference
- Output monitor on Pin 9 shows a voltage thats directly proportional to the transmit output power
- Around 160mW output for 1mW input
My RF power sensor is only rated to 6GHz and I estimate it’s 1-2dB low at 10GHz so I’m probably getting 23dBm (200mW) as per the specification.