Frequency Calibration

The first thing you want to calibrate on your Wolf is Frequency since you will have a hard time calibrating anything else if you can't tune your receiver to the right place.

Frequency calibration is done by adjusting the VCXO Correction value so that your Wolf's frequency is aligned with the rest of the world.

Keep it warm

Your Wolf uses a 12.888 Mhz TCXO based on a CTS 581 chip.

Even though TC stands for Temperature Compensated your Wolf's frequency might slightly change when warming up.

For that reason, it is recommended to let your Wolf warm up until the Mother-Board temperature displayed on the screen is stable:

Calibration frequency

The same TCXO frequency is used as a reference for all bands.

For that reason, it's recommended to calibrate your transceiver on higher frequencies, where the frequency multiplier is bigger, and where compensation modification will have greater effect.

We can for example use the 2m band and work at 145 Mhz.

For calibration, we will need a reference, so we'll use a trusted transceiver to transmit on 145 Mhz and check the signal on the Wolf.

Calibration procedure

It's now time to adjust your Wolf's VCXO Correction!

The parameter VCXO Correction can be fond in Menu/Calibration/Hardware/(page 3)/VCXO Correction (check here if you can't find the Calibration menu):

First set your Wolf to listen the 145 Mhz frequency and use the FFT- button of your bottom menu bar (by default it should be on the 3rd page) to zoom in your waterfall display to the max:

Make sure your Wolf mode is set to NFM.

Set your reference transceiver to 145 Mhz and push the PTT.

You should see something like that on your Wolf's screen:

As you can see, the Wolf's frequency is about 400 Hz higher than the reference transceiver's frequency.

You'll now need to adjust the VCXO Correction value to align the frequencies:

• Increase the VCXO Correction value to move the reference signal to the right on the waterfall,
• Decrease the VCXO Correction value to move the reference signal to the left on the waterfall.

Once the VCXO Correction value adjusted, you can use the F8 key to exit calibration menu and go back to waterfall display.

After a few adjustment attempts, you should get something like this:

Your done, your Wolf's frequency is now calibrated !

Keep in mind that the next time you will power on your Wolf in a cold state, it might be a few tens of Hertz off. That's perfectly normal, it will adjust over time while warming up (it can take up to 20 minutes...).