[hpsdr] My horribly silly questions

[Jeremy McDermond]

On Jun 14, 2010, at 11:10 AM, Dwayne L wrote:

> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> 
> Hello folks,
> 
> I've been reading along the list for a while. I stumbled upon hpsdr by chance when I wondered what TAPR was up to these days. Doing google searches, youtube searches, I saw some of the different things people do with software defined radio.
> 
> I have been seriously considering putting something together and thought I would ask a few questions. I would first like to ask if an OpenHPSDR rig would be suitable as a primary radio?

I think the answer is really "it depends."  The biggest thing that I think keeps it from being a "primary radio" if you're using all TAPR pieces is that you can only get a limited amount of power output.  Pennywhistle can give you up to 20W or so, but there isn't sufficient filtering on it to run without external filtering (this is intended to be Alex, which isn't out yet).  This problem can be solved in a variety of ways right now.  There's Hercules from Gerd that's a 100W amplifier with selectable filters in it.  The problem for those of us in the US is that it tends to be quite expensive.  You can also combine the transmitter with an external amp.  Some people are using the HF Projects SuperPacker Pro amp.  Others are using filtering and amps from Communications Concepts.  Either way, getting more that 500mW out of the transmitter is currently the biggest hurdle to being a "primary radio" IMHO, and you are kinda on your own to solve it until Alex comes out.

> Also, and I feel really silly for asking this. I noticed the Mercury and Penelope boards each have their respective antenna connections. Growing up in the age of fancy Japanese tranceivers, I was wondering how people hooked up to the same antenna?

Gerd makes an antenna switch for OpenHPSDR.  Many people have separate transmitting antennas.  Alex will have an antenna switch that you can use to combine tx/rx on to one antenna.

> I have many more questions, but wording them in a language that a human can decipher tends to be a bit tricky. I started writing this several hours ago, walked away, came back and hacked it to pieces.

Fire away with questions, and I'm happy to get my sanskrit dictionary out to try to decipher it. :)

--
Jeremy McDermond (NH6Z)
Xenotropic Systems
mcdermj at xenotropic.com




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