[hpsdr] My horribly silly questions

[Joe Martin K5SO]

Dwayne,

To chime in too, I also use the OpenHPSDR rig (Ozy, Mercury,  
Excalibur, Penelope, Atlas) as my primary radio at full legal power on  
the HF bands with external amps, and full legal power at 432 MHz and  
1296 MHz EME with it as well (with external LNAs, amps, sequencers,  
etc).  The performance is absolutely astounding!  The rig replaces my  
IC-7800 because it simply outperforms it, hands down!

I use the HF amp section and T/R switching section of the IC-7800 to  
provide up to 200W output to drive an external linear amp to 1.5KW and  
using the pass band filters on the IC-7800 there's no need for an Alex  
filter board at all.  The 0.5w rf output from Penelope is more than  
enough to get full legal power in that way.  I've helped a friend  
configure a similar arrangement with his OpenHPSDR rig using an old  
Kenwood transceiver as the power amp, T/R switching, and band pass  
filtering, too.  It's very straightforward to do without mangling the  
original transceiver in the event you desire to restore the  
transceiver to its original configuration later.

A major advantage of the OpenHPSDR approach is that you can literally  
make it do almost anything you wish by modifying the software yourself  
to do so if you don't mind experimenting with programming.  That's  
especially true now that KISS Konsole software is available; it's a  
simpler program than the complex but highly successful PowerSDR  
program.  KK is aimed at the novice programmer to allow him to get his  
feet wet trying out his own ideas without being overwhelmed by the  
complexity of PowerSDR.

I'll never go back to analog transceivers, that's for sure.  OpenHPSDR  
units certainly are not a plug and play items but if you're willing to  
get your feet wet learning something new and have some initiative to  
do so it's well worth doing it in my opinion!

Good luck!

73,  Joe K5SO








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