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Re: [IRCA] Frankenradio
Thanks Brian,
I opened up the SDR out of curiosity. pretty sure it's the same A/D
chip, etc as the other variants.
One of the disadvantages of using it as an IF/detector behind the R71-A
is that I can only "see" about 300KHz at a time and anything more than
10KHz from center is attenuated. That's also a good thing. I've got the
PIEXX memory in the Icom so it tunes down to DC and I get WWVB clear
enough to copy with just a 28' vertical and 43 mix Balun. The SDR does
dig out signals too weak to get audio on the Icom not to mention the
better selectivity.
Since the second mixer level is controlled by AGC I might have to do
offset tuning to dig out a weak signal adjacent to a strong one but with
the narrow filter engaged it doesn't seem to be an issue so far. 1320 is
the strongest signal here so if I can pull 1330 out of the mud it
shouldn't be a problem.
You could always pick up a P4 XP box fairly cheap if you want to upgrade
and I've seen dual cores going fairly cheap. The problem with
application development for Mac and Linux is the same as it's always
been. Most of the world runs on Windows/Intel and a lot of hardware
manufacturers don't want the expense of having to write and maintain 3
versions of software.
Tim Hills
Sioux Falls, SD
------ Original Message ------
From: "Brian Rachford" <azswdxing@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America"
<irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 4/5/2015 6:43:23 AM
Subject: Re: [IRCA] Frankenradio
Tim,
I got back into DXing via the inexpensive SDR route myself last summer.
I've also heard (no pun intended) that the RTL.SDR unit is rather deaf
on
the low end. Instead, I'm using a cheap RTL-SDR ("dash" not "dot")
dongle
with a separate upconverter to get LW/MW/SW and that option may
currently
be the best way to do SDR under $100. But, it sounds like you've done
some
good mods. I'm lucky in that my local stations are low power, but I
need
filters or a tuned antenna for optimal performance due to the low
dynamic
range. I'd have a more expensive SDR by now, but OS X and Linux
software
support for anything higher-end is pathetic.
Good luck and welcome back to DXing.
Brian Rachford - Prescott, AZ
azswdxing@xxxxxxxxx
http://azswdxing.wordpress.com/
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