Apologies to those I tried to work last night and failed,  it turned out the transverter was in the end, 60kc out.    I had performed a beacon check and it was receiving a beacon on the expected frequency in the expected direction so I thought all was well ...  turns out it was a different beacon ;)

I guess the crystal on the cheap chinese synth module was made of cheese.  I replaced it with the TCXO and that was within 3kc @13cm, a small tweak brought it dead on and it appears to be very stable.

Other issues are the mini-kits transverter transmit amplifier chain seems to prefer to oscillate ( a pair of 20dB gain GALIL mmics) ... I had to keep a damp finger on it when transmitting ...  the last of the three bias generators on the PA crapped itself and had to be fixed (that's all 3 stages now, must be a common fault when run CW rather than pulsed? )

I did manage to work 2 stations, my close neighbour and VKV, but by then the contest was over.   An interesting night but at least I am a step closer to being properly QRV 13.  I'll tidy it up a bit and see if I can sort out the oscillation ...

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