Tuning up the Heathkit IG-102

After spending some time figuring out how to use the Digilent Analog Discovery 2 USB oscilloscope I picked up at Hamcation earlier this year, I was able to use it to look at the output from the Heathkit IG-102 signal generator.

The Digilent AD2 is pretty cool. The software lets you use the AD2 as an oscilloscope, signal generator, spectrum analyzer, and several other things.

Using the spectrum analyzer function made it pretty easy to set the IG-102 to a frequency, see what the actual frequency was, and then tweak the variable inductor coil for each band setting to tune the output to the dial setting.

The output of the IG-102 is pretty low though, less then 0.3 V peak-to-peak. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be that low, but I expected it would be in the 3-5V range.

Well, at least it outputs something that’s reasonably well calibrated now. I suppose if I had to, I could build an amplifier to feed the signal into. I’ll see if there’s anything else I can do to get the signal amplitude up to where it seems like it should be. Maybe the IG-102 needs the tubes replaced as well.