View Single Post
  #5   Report Post  
Old February 20th 11, 05:39 PM posted to sci.electronics.design,rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
John Larkin John Larkin is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Oct 2006
Posts: 21
Default help designing gimmick capacitor

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:20:12 -0600, "amdx" wrote:

Hi all,
I finished the amp that had the 5 Ghz transistor, I changed it to a slower
one.
The objective of this amp is to cause minimal loading of the circuit it is
measuring.
When I install the box cover the voltage gain drops by 7%, so I think the
input capacitor
plate is being loaded by the cover.
The input capacitor plates can be seen here;

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/p...mspaced5mm.jpg

The plates are 1 cm x 1 cm spaced 5 mm apart.

I have thoughts about rectangular plates 0.25 cm x 4 cm to get more
distance from the top cover, (and the bottom.)
Or a real gimmick cap where I twist a couple of 39 Gauge wires together and
attach opposite ends to input and output.

Any ideas to minimize input capacitance to the box?

Here's the amp in box.
http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/p...erampinbox.jpg

This is the original circuit page with schematic;
http://www.crystal-radio.eu/enfetamp.htm
Thanks, Mike

PS, I was having trouble getting some close-up pictures, I grabbed a
magnifying glass and took some
pictures through that, works good.


Use a real surface-mount 0.3 pF cap, or a homemade coaxial cap. The 1
cm square plates are too big and have their own capacitance to the
world.

Bootstrap the drain of Q1.

"T" means transformer, which shows that this circuit was done by an
amateur. All that tricky stuff could be replaced by one opamp.

It could have close to zero Cin with a little positive feedback.

John