Hello group.
Has anyone any experience with this SDR ?
It looks interesting and I'm a bit tempted, especially as it works full spec down to 500 Hz and "usable" to
100 Hz.
But as I have never used an SDR, I haven't got a clue if it's any good or not.
Tony.
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Tony - I received SAQ two ways a few days ago -
1) wire antenna straight into sound card, using Winrad;
2) Same wire antenna through SDR-IQ using SDR-Radio.
Antenna is 100m inverted U tuned with around 100mH (can't really remember
exactly).
I swapped the antenna physically between the two setups every few seconds.
I was using two separate computers, one for each method.
Result? - really very little difference. A good clear signal on both. The sound card/Winrad setup might have
been marginally cleaner, but bearing in mind that this was a lashup, with no attempt at any kind of
optimisation or minimalisation of computer noise, I would say that the SDR-IQ was close to being the equal of
the "wire into soundcard" method. With some careful filtering to clean up the computer noise, it would almost
certainly equal or exceed it.
I found incidentally, that SDR-Radio software has a much more sensitive waterfall display than the Spectravue
supplied with the SDR-IQ. The former gave a strong clear trace, while the latter's trace was barely
discernable.
Get one - SDRs are the best thing since CW!
Hope this helps,
Martin GW3UCJ Swansea.
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