Well next week is dead week so that means that the Fall 2003 semester here at Purdue is coming to a close. That also means that I am taking tests, finishing labs, and completing projects.
One such project is an experiment board for one of my classes, ECET 304 or RF Communications. Its a simple board with three independant circuits. One circuit is a high speed RF amplifier circuit that operates at 300MHz. The second is a sensitive analog two stage amplifier circuit and the third is a digital oscilator + counter circuit that drives a few capacitive loads.
Enough of all of the gobbledegook, click here for some cool pics of the board both pre and post population. I spent 3 hours tonight up in the excellent projects lab in MGL 1222 with my group members soldering and getting the board ready for presentation tomorrow. After that we’ll have to run through our testing procedures to discover how each of the three sections affect each other with various levels of EMI suppression on the circuits. Right now there are no RFC chokes, bypass caps, or decoupling caps anywhere on the board which will most definately lead to some gnarly interference :)
Just a quick note on this. I took this exam this morning and I think I did great on it! There weren’t many problems at all that I had to spend time thinking about. I feel that I did 85 or better on the test and possibly into the 90’s range.
Took this exam on Tuesday and I feel I did OK on it. Probably between 80 and 90 but I might have an A depending how the chips fall. I was iffy on probably 2 or 3 problems so we’ll see.