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Has anyone here experimented with Software Defined Radio? I’m thinking about building one for HAM ops.
Has anyone here experimented with Software Defined Radio? I’m thinking about building one for HAM ops.
I ran across a lady who designed and built one herself, describes the process in several parts. Heck, the units can be made vey small, so hooking up to a netbook or an iPad would be cool. I wonder what a TX-only system with adjustable input to final would be like, particularly for low band.
I gotta go, winds are really kicking up here, looking at possible 65mph gusts tonite into tomorrow. Check spring lines, batten down the hatches … Hope my antenna stays up.
Total posts : 4536665mph winds are an average Tuesday here in windy Wyoming!
I messed with SDR in the early 90’s some when things were still not so very small..in the public realms anyway.
It has it’s purposes and uses. However not everything is best served up on a computer..or controlled by a computer.
Eventually those small boxes tied to the laptop have to feed a fat linear, coax and antenna array, not something so easily toted around on the lap!
For certain applications…old school still prevails IMO.
RFB
Total posts : 45366Well, modern transceivers all have digital access code memories anyway, and it’s very handy to have the internet available, plus Morse code conversion software for working CW, things like that.
After some research, I consider Part 15 longwave to be a wonderful and challenging way to introduce people to work DX with very low power.
Not necessarily portable … I live aboard (didn’t get much sleep last night), so space is an issue. Having a wide band box and the computer to do the rest would be great a solution. I’d need to get approval for mounting an antenna to a piling.
Total posts : 45366Ahh yes the ol Morse code conversion units. I remember when those things were frowned upon by almost every HAM that existed. Even the instructor who administered my license test was against them. Me…I was all for them and thought it was the neatest thing. Those things actually helped a lot of people learn the Morse code.
Thing about it all is that this SDR stuff, and anything relating to radio communication, is barely keeping itself afloat in the ever shrinking world of real radio communication…real in meaning actually using a simple contact closure key by hand to do the dash-dot. Turning a plate tuning knob or IF notch filter knob, rotating the beam up on that 50 foot tower, copying noisy contact through all the static and holding a conversation using that hand driven Morse code key.
Then there is of course the modernization of communications with cell phones and internet and social networking..all of which seriously outweighs traditional radio communications by a mass fold.
It is the small group of us who find this kind of thing (SDR etc) useful and practical for our purposes. That is a very tiny market compared to the market of communications via iPad etc.
At least a few of us will keep the old school alive!
RFB
Total posts : 45366Well – if I had an SDR – I would try it for AM BCB DXing.
I have worked hard with simpler receivers to hear
Europe in Connecticut on the AM BCB.I have not had the time, location, and equipment to
do it right, though.In all of these years, I have only been able to positively
identify four stations. They are: Spain on 684 kHz,
the UK on 693 kHz, the UK again on 1215 kHz, and
– what was know as “West Germany” – at the time –
on 1593 kHz. From the Caribbean, there used to be
splits from 535, 545, 555, 825(?), 1035, 1155, and 1265 kHz.
555 is still on the air, but I think it is the only one left.
And, as I have mentioned previously, there was a cool
station from French Guiana, that played mostly blues.
It was great. That one was on 1375, and has been off
the air for more than 10 years now. I miss it.I understand that the SDRs can really pull those AM BCB and
LW BCB stations right out of the noise!As an AM BCB DXer, that would be a real thrill for me.
Bruce, DRS2
Total posts : 45366“I understand that the SDRs can really pull those AM BCB and
LW BCB stations right out of the noise!”Well, lots depend on the antenna and the filtering, especially in the software. But, the trick would be to build your own … it has been done:
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