well, maybe i guess, designing a serious rf from scratch is not for hobbiest? the ghz SA cost tens of thousands!
this is my picture taken a while back. what i want to do is to transfer all the components (rf transmitter) on the blue pcb (left), into my own made pcb, so i can put it all in one nice pcb with my own mcu and those pots. at the "right below" is the rf receiver. my anticipated problem will be the transmitter efficiency (with my own pcb), i need a way to monitor this. as Zad's post, we can monitor it on the reciever, but, but.... how? the agc?
i've done some range efficiency test (the practical one haha), what i did is hook the receiver up the dso, to catch any incoming digital data from rf, the data distortion will tell somehow the range efficiency, and i.. with my transmitter will move away at some distance and press the transmit button, and run back to the dso and see the triggered digital distortion. kind of funny for me if i have to do like >100meters range test running back and forth.