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by lxe 2165 days ago
What's the purpose of that capacitor?
2 comments

These are run by solar panels that only transmit during the day. The capacitor just gives a half a minute or so in the event of brief cloud cover, panel not facing the sun at a good angle, etc. Not strictly necessary, but since a WSPR message takes almost two minutes to send, a good idea to not have it abort in the middle of the transmission due to lack of power for a couple of seconds.
As the other person responded, basically a battery back-up.