A few weeks ago, in a weekly microwave video chat someone mentioned getting the Linton LT9100 handheld transceiver. It claims to work up to 1300MHz with 5W (Chinese watts?)
A few of us ordered one, and I got mine today, and made a quick check.
When I use it in the house with the IC-9700, it actually does transmit and receive.
Here is the catch. When connected to an antenna normally used for running the local repeater with 1W, this happened:
In TX no signal through the repeater.
In RX, transmitting with the IC-9700, no reception whatsoever.
In other words, transmit power is certainly below 1W, and the receiver is deaf.
Given that the chip in this transceiver is not specified, and filters may be off, I am not so surprised.
Okay, let's try with a 30dB attenuator between radio and a spectrum analyzer, just to be safe.
Oops! Hardly any visible output on 1296. Let's just say that some amplification is needed. A lot of amplification, the output is in the uW (yes, microwatts) range.
I still need to check receiver sensitivity, I do have a signal generator for the frequency, I need to check if I can modulate it with FM.
That is for another day.
The radio can be easily programmed for the repeater (and other 23cm) frequencies, so the question is, can it be used as a separate transceiver, with a bit of filtering and a good deal of amplification in both transmit and receive mode?
Possibly. There is no connector for external microphone (or speaker) so it will have to be dismantled and modified, so the PTT can be controlled externally.
I will also wait to see the results from other people in the group, and what they think about it.
So, first impressions, maybe not good for 1296. We shall see.
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