[hpsdr] TAPR Kits

[Jeremy McDermond]

On May 31, 2010, at 10:42 PM, Harry A wrote:

Hey Harry, welcome back to the group.

> Thanks to all of you for the information/guidance.  This brings me to new questions.  Considering the parts situation with the SDR-1000 and the unusual way it interfaces to the PC, I'm now left with the following questions:
> 
> If I go with existing TAPR kits, am I correct in thinking I need the following:  (including of course, the case and power supply)
> 
> Atlas
> Magister
> Mercury (If I go with the bare board, are all parts currently available for me to put it together myself??  Does the TAPR PCB kit come with schematics and parts lists??)

You are correct that these are the three basic pieces you need.  Remember that the project has put together Pandora for a case, and the LPU for a power supply.  If you go with an ATX power supply rather than LPU, you'll want to make sure that it's a fairly clean supply that's not going to cause a lot of noise.  Cheap ATX PC supplies are probably not going to be your best bet.

As far as kit building, I would highly discourage you from building Mercury yourself.  The concerns here are the exact same ones as for Magister or Ozy.  There is one FPGA chip on there that has some very fine leads and is difficult to get soldered in unless you have significant experience with surface mount soldering.  When I priced out ordering the Mercury parts from Digikey and Mouser, I ended up saving like $10 over the assembled and tested Mercury, so I figured you aren't saving very much cash.  My recommendation would definitely just be to pick up the A&T Mercury.

> I understand these kits will give me a complete receiver??

This should get you up and running on receive.

>  Would that receiver compare favorably with the Kenwood TS-480 for instance??  My initial thought would be it would be better just due to filtering if nothing else??

It depends on how you're measuring "favorably."  With OpenHPSDR you have virtually any filter width that you want.  I don't believe the TS-480 has a subreceiver either.  This isn't even mentioning all the graphical goodies you get like panadapters, waterfalls and such.  If you're looking for receiver performance figures, you can check out:

http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=Receiver_Performance_Tests

where some folks have done performance tests on Mercury.

> Do I "need" something like the Excalibur?

I've been running without Excalibur just fine so far.  I just built one though, and it's cool to play with.  The receiver will work fine without one.

> For a complete transmitter, I would need:
> Penelope (this comes from Germany only?) I see them on eBay.

Yes, eBay or directly from Gerd in Germany is the only way to get Penelope right now.  This gives you 0.5 W out.

> Pennywhistle

This gives you 15W out.

> Would I need Alexiares??

My understanding is that the output of Penelope is clean enough to put on the air, but that Pennywhistle is not.  You will need Alex to reduce Pennywhistle's spurious emissions to an acceptable level.  You can always add your own filters or amplifier as appropriate.  There are some folks using the Communications Concepts stuff, and there are some folks using the HF Packer series amps as well.

> 
> 
> Thanks again for all the help
> 
> 73
> 
> Harry  KD0LQE


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




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