Friday, January 02, 2026

A contact on the LARCSet radio

I'm having some trouble with this radio. Extremely low modulation with the mic amp as it comes. Not sure what's wrong. To get enough power out I'm vastly over-driving it with an external mic amp. Richard, VK3LRJ, kindly humoured me and recorded a bit of how I'm received there. I've overlayed that bit of audio in this video recording from my shack.


Not great. An interesting little radio though. https://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/larcset/ 


2 comments:

Peter Juliano said...

Hi Peter,

Thanks for posting the video as my LARCSet arrived on Christmas and I have as yet to crack open the box. Thus, a good bit of information as likely I would see the same issue.

I did a modification of the EAQRP Club radio called the Perigrino (Pilgrim) which appeared as an article in SPRAT which I renamed the Paesano. It too had the low gain mic issue, and it was only cured with external mic preamp and electret microphone. But since the video shows a similar mic and external amp that likely is not the cure. Any possibility of the BFO frequency needing a tweak? Just thinking aloud as when I get round to it, I will see the same issue as you did. I do not plan on using the analog VFO but a two range LO at 4 and 18MHz so I can have LSB and USB for FT-8/

73's
Pete

Peter Marks said...

Thank you Pete. I’ve replaced C9 (in series with the BFO crystal) with a 40pF trimmer so I can adjust the BFO. Lovely to get a comment from the master - 73!