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Old February 20th 11, 07:44 PM posted to sci.electronics.design,rec.radio.amateur.homebrew
amdx amdx is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 349
Default help designing gimmick capacitor


"John Larkin" wrote in message
...
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


Bootstrap the drain of Q1.

You need to walk me through that, (I'm an amateur)

Ah, he's done some nice work on the subject of crystal radios and high Q
inductors.
http://www.crystal-radio.eu/index.html
Page down to experiment with LC circuits.

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


How much closer? If the input cap is 0.3pf what do you the input impedance
is?
Input is 0.3pf, 20 Meg to ground driving FET gate.
Thanks, Mikek