Progress with the HP 8561E – the 100 MHz to 600 MHz system, driving the 2nd converter, and other sub-system including the 300 MHz output.

Initially, it looked like a failure of the 600 MHz doubler, so I decided to open up the RF case of the A15 assembly, and to go to component level troubleshooting.

According to the block diagram, the 8561E first uses a trippler to convert the 100 MHz VCO output to 300 MHz, and then a doubler to convert the 300 MHz to 600 MHz. Note that there are various revisions of this board, not all use the same frequency multiplication scheme.

Very soon it became clear the the double is not getting enough 300 MHz power to work. So, to check it, I injected a 300 MHz signal after opening the signal chain after the tripler (there is an attenuator, just desoldered the middle resistor of the PI configuration attenuator, and checked all the components around this area)

Only about 2 dBm are needed to drive the tripler, there is an amp stage in front of the doubler. A quick test – the doubler is working just fine!

So, probably a fault in the trippler? At least, there is 300 MHz present. What is going on? Let’s go one step further back – removed the tripler transistor, marked “Hb” which is a NE85635 transistor.

Let’s drive the 300 MHz circuit from an external generator. This is running at quite high power – about 18 dBm!

With the injected signal, all is working fine! So, the 300 MHz transistor probably failed? By luck and coincidence, I found a spare 2sc3603 transistor, marked “Oq”, and soldered it in.
Surprisingly, the old transistor, once desoldered, tested just fine. And, to confirm this, the 8561E still not working!

The 300 MHz system can be conveniently monitor by checking the 300 MHz cal output with another (working) spectrum analyzer.

Well, we need to go back one more step – to the 100 MHz amp.
The tricky fact – the 100 MHz system is working, but after some careful measurements and calculations (I don’t have a precise active probe here), the power at the output of the 100 MHz amp is clearly low. This needs to deliver well over 10 dBm of power, otherwise, all the following systems won’t work properly.

Fortunately, the 100 MHz amp is a fairly common part, a MSA-0505 gain block.

These MSA-0505 are used in many HP circuits, just took one from an old board:

The A15 board, still with the 100 MHz gain block, and the tripler transistor replaced…

A last step – replaced the Oq transistor, with the old/original HP part (300 MHz circuit).

Finally, some tests – the 8561E (at least the low band up to 3 GHz is working again, and the CAL output is in spec (0.02 dB difference to another calibrated 300 MHz source!).