Product update from Wayne Burdick, N6KR:

XG3 RF Signal Source

Remember the XG3? It’s our deck-of-cards-sized, versatile and highly stable all-band signal source. I tried to compare its weight to my HP8647A and nearly broke my postal scale. (The XG3 weighs 4 oz. – 9 V battery included. The HP sig gen warps nearby spacetime.)

“I need one! (why?)”

Because the XG3 puts out a clean, synthesized carrier that simplifies all sorts of receiver work, like filter alignment, MDS testing, and signal tracing. And because it has four different calibrated output levels (into 50 ohms):

  • -107 dBm (1 uV)
  • -73 dBm (50 uV / S9)
  • -33 dBm (40 over 9)
  • 0 dBm (0.23 V RMS, i.e. Humongous)

There are + and - buttons to allow you quickly get to the target ham band (160 - 2 meters). Harmonics out to 1400 MHz can be used to cover UHF bands as well.

But that’s just the start of what you can do with this little oscillator. Via the included USB cable, you can control and configure the XG3 remotely, do wide-range frequency sweeps, and download new firmware. It even includes built-in CW and FSK modulation. (“You mean it’s a QRPpp CW/RTTY transmit driver for homebrew QRP projects?” Yes. With an all-band tunable VFO. “Can you work all states with a barefoot XG3?” TBD. Let me know.)