The high-capacitance ceramic capacitors are very useful for switching regulators and for general bypassing. They're actually less expensive than tantalum electrolytics in most cases. Consequently, there are no tantalum capacitors in the 70 cm receiver.
NP0 capacitors are probably OK, but a 0.01 uF capacitor in an 0603 size appears to be much more microphonic than the larger leaded version. I used plastic film capacitors in the PLL integrators but should have used them everywhere in the feedback loops. Unfortunately, they are going to be larger than the ceramic capacitors.
73,
John KD6OZH
----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Ettus" matt@ettus.com To: "Chuck Green" greencl@mindspring.com Cc: eagle@amsat.org Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 05:05 UTC Subject: [eagle] Re: Jim's Phase Noise Number!!
My advice is to choose the technology that best suits your needs. They both work and we have a lot of success with both of them when we take precautions as described above.
I don't know how they do in space, but you can now get very large ceramic caps -- like 22uF in a 1206 package.
Matt
Via the Eagle mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA Eagle@amsat.org http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/eagle