Dragon Tamer
Member
As some of you may know, I have been working on my shoe box radio. I have been building the power supply for it and I decided to include some TTL switches as part of the power supply. The problem is that the radio sucks up an enormous amount of power (not too bad though) during high power base frequencies. It sucks up so much power that the radio will "stutter" because the built in filter capacitor can't handle the load. I've added some external filter capacitors to help it cope, but the problem persists.
In the old design the batteries power went directly into the voltage supply for the radio with a standard SPST switch. In the new design however, it has to power the TTL switches, and go through a PNP transistor (configured as a collector follower) before getting to the actual radio. I am worried because I think that the PNP is the actual cause of the problem by not enabling enough current to go to the radio. If I can't fix the problem then I'm going to have to get rid of the transistor and replace it with a relay which is not what I want to do (I don't want replace an electromechanical device that is going to wear out if 5 months).
Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this problem? (I will post a schematic later once I finish it)
In the old design the batteries power went directly into the voltage supply for the radio with a standard SPST switch. In the new design however, it has to power the TTL switches, and go through a PNP transistor (configured as a collector follower) before getting to the actual radio. I am worried because I think that the PNP is the actual cause of the problem by not enabling enough current to go to the radio. If I can't fix the problem then I'm going to have to get rid of the transistor and replace it with a relay which is not what I want to do (I don't want replace an electromechanical device that is going to wear out if 5 months).
Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this problem? (I will post a schematic later once I finish it)