I recently brewed up a small portable NBFM tranceiver for the local
ham group. Smallness and low cost were a requirement. My initial
design which is working well is based on an 18MHz crystal that i
multiply in balanced doublers three times over to 144MHz (using two
transistors in push-pull at each stage) followed by a 500mW 2N3866 PA.
I have found that without a high bandwidth oscilloscope (I used a tek
465) it is impossible to correctly align the tx. I am now considering
switching to a scheme where i can run a VCO at 144MHz directly and
lock it to a lower fundamental crystal. i can do this by:
a) injection locking the VCO with the a crystal oscillator. I have
seen almost no use of this method (EMRFD just mentions it in one line)
in amateur literature. my last post on this topic went unanswered last
week.
b) using a simple first order PLL. is there a way to simplify this?
the cost of a PLL IC or even an SBL mixer would be too high.
c) use an overtone directly on 144MHz (9th overtone in a butler
config) and phase modulate its output. Any pointers to a phase
modulator operating at VHF?

- farhan