New RF parts and new promises - part 2

Tokmas CID9N65E3 rocks! Performance It is CRAZY how efficient this GaN FET is in TO-252 (DPAK) package. It generates 5W @ 28 MHz with 13.8V at drain without even warming up! Close to 4W @ 50 MHz with 12.0V at drain. 5W+ @ 50 MHz with 13.8V at drain. 11W+ @ 50 MHz with 20V at drain. It even produces ~3W at 70 MHz with 13V at drain - w00t! ...

June 15, 2025 · 1 min · 207 words · Dhiru Kholia

The poor quality, reliability and longevity of MOONDROP products

I had bought two pairs of MOONDROP Aria 2 IEMs after auditioning them at a Headphone Connect event. After a few months of usage, one of the Aria 2 earphones lost audio in the left earpiece. We got it 'serviced' under warranty from Headphone Zone. After a year of almost no usage, the other pair of Aria 2 IEMs lost audio in one of the earpieces too! I have never seen this poor quality, reliability and longevity before! ...

June 15, 2025 · 1 min · 127 words · Dhiru Kholia

Fast(est) gate drivers in the West

I recently found some FET gate drivers which are quite fast! The Drivers Wuxi Maxinmicro MX1025D - Favorite! BD2311NVX-LBE2 from ROHM Semiconductor TI LMG1020 Tokmas LMG1020YFFR Usage They are perfect for driving the fast Tokmas GaN FETs that we recently discussed on this site. Our 'workhorse' gate driver for the recent experiments has been the Onsemi's NCP81074ADR2G in a friendly SOIC-8 package. And we have shifted to MX1025D gate driver in our latest amplifier designs. ...

June 3, 2025 · 1 min · 77 words · Dhiru Kholia

Debugging/Reversing Firebase gRPC Traffic with mitmproxy

Recently, I was stuck trying to understand how Firebase gRPC calls worked and how I could generate, modify, and replay them. Trapping and modifying existing gRPC traffic was not working well. Finally, I took a step back and spent some time learning how to build and debug simple Firebase applications. This approach helped me tremendously, and I was able to make further progress with my original task quickly. Solution You may find the following code sample useful when reversing/debugging Firebase applications. ...

April 16, 2025 · 2 min · 426 words · Dhiru Kholia

Ideas for a 2m (144 MHz) WSPR / FT8 beacon

This is an early design sketch of a 2m WSPR beacon. Key Points 25 MHz HCI 0.5ppm TCXO powering the Si5351 module instead of the 26 MHz TCXO. If this fails, we can use a 10 MHz OCXO instead (a bit out of spec but works fine). Tokmas CID10N65F GaN FET might work @ 144 MHz as the 'final'. If not, use Mitsubishi RD15HVF1-501 MOSFET as backup. 2SK3475 as the driver with variable DC bias at the gate The whole VCC to this amplifier will be PTT switched Ideally, we would want to keep the driver stage linear but the final stage as switched (Class C/D) Alternate: Perhaps by DC coupling the Si5351 input to 2SK3475, we can avoid the need for DC gate bias The "RFC" (bifilar coil still needed?) part will need to be figured out for VHF! Status Results: To be built and tested soon! ...

April 15, 2025 · 1 min · 172 words · Dhiru Kholia

Easily verifying certificate chains

Here is a quick script to verify that the certificate chain is valid and will work. % cat verify-cert-key.sh #!/usr/bin/env bash certFile="${1}" keyFile="${2}" caFile="${3}" certPubKey="$(openssl x509 -noout -pubkey -in "${certFile}")" keyPubKey="$(openssl pkey -pubout -in "${keyFile}")" if [[ "${certPubKey}" == "${keyPubKey}" ]] then echo "PASS: key and cert match" else echo "FAIL: key and cert DO NOT match" fi openssl verify -CAfile "${3}" "${1}"

April 14, 2025 · 1 min · 63 words · Dhiru Kholia

Reimagining the 'Tangara' Music Player - Part 2

Tangara is an excellent project! It recently inspired us to build a similar FOSS DAP product but at a much lower cost of <= 40 USD. Our initial tech stack: RP2350-Zero, PCM5102A 32-bit 384kHz DAC, Burr-Brown OPA1662 (specified for 3.3v) as the unity gain buffer and headphone driver, no explicit DC-DC converters anywhere, microSD card, everything will be a module if possible We quickly got this prototype working on a breadboard and discovered some limitations: ...

April 11, 2025 · 5 min · 966 words · Dhiru Kholia

Ideas for a 6m WSPR beacon

This is an early design sketch of a 6m WSPR beacon. Key Points 25 MHz HCI 0.5ppm TCXO powering the Si5351 module instead of the 26 MHz TCXO. If this fails, we can use a 10 MHz OCXO instead (a bit out of spec but works fine). Tokmas CID10N65F GaN FET should work @ 50 MHz TI UCC27614 or Onsemi NCP81074 gate driver Status Results: To be built and tested soon! ...

April 10, 2025 · 2 min · 240 words · Dhiru Kholia

My WSPR beacon results - April 2025

This ~1W to ~5W WSPR beacon runs continuously on the 10m band. It handles extreme environmental temperatures pretty well (it is 42°C plus here). Our article on this beacon's design and operation will appear in the May/June 2025 issue of the QEX magazine soon. References WSPR TX by G0UPL QEX May-June 2025 TOC ...

April 10, 2025 · 1 min · 57 words · Dhiru Kholia

New RF parts and new promises

Ismo (OH2FTG) recently introduced me to a bunch of Tokmas RF parts. Out of these, the Tokmas CID10N65F GaN FET stood out. It seems to have a lot of potential (for HF + 6m) at a very low price point. This RF MOSFET part can be purchased from LCSC. It seems Tokmas CID10N65F has the potential to completely replace the RD16HHF1 part from Mitsubishi Electric! Datasheet Datasheet excerpt: ...

March 20, 2025 · 2 min · 237 words · Dhiru Kholia