[hpsdr] ability to amplify pennywhistle (much) beyond 17W?

[Jeremy McDermond]

On Nov 17, 2010, at 9:40 AM, Erik Anderson wrote:

> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> 
> Thank you for all these responses, I think the more and varied responses I get the better.  I need to know not just what is out there, but what is necessary and expected and possible.

I think what folks are saying is that amplification is a fairly easy problem to solve.  Sure, you can't just plug the BNC on Pennywhistle into the back of a Yaesu Quadra.  But, there are plenty of ways to make things happen.  You kinda have to figure out what you want as well.  If you're talking about liner amplifiers, you need to realize that to get a 1.5kW class amplifier is a multi-thousand dollar proposition, that sometimes requires that you have 200VAC to plug it in.  If you're looking at just getting 100W, as other people have said, you have quite a few choices:

	(1)  Use an analog rig's PA like Joe has suggested
	(2)  Gerd makes a 100W amp for OpenHPSDR
	(3)  There's the HF Packer Pro, and HF Packer series of amps
	(4)  The communications concepts stuff
	(5)  Home brew your own amplifier

Also keep in mind that doubling your power only gets you 3dB of gain.

> I've been sitting on the fence for this project for a while (one day not too long ago the background of all my open tabs turned bright yellow).  Plus I hadn't known that yesterday's club meeting was "bring your netbook and let's do digital!" and none of them are putting the same kind of outlay into this kind of radio (although they are calling me a trailblazer).

Well, of course they're not.  Their idea of "digital" is hooking a Signalink USB to their analog rig.  That's $100.  OpenHPSDR is a pure digital rig that uses DSP all the way from the antenna to the speaker.  It has some fairly impressive capabilities.  Can their analog rigs transmit WSPR beacons on multiple bands simultaneously?  The PennyWhisper code that Bill and cohorts developed allows you to do that.  Can you decode every CW signal in 192kHz of bandwidth?  Alex's CW Skimmer with OpenHPSDR hardware can do that.  You have to realize that OpenHPSDR isn't bolting soundcards to old analog rigs, it's attempting to advance the state of the art of a new type of rig entirely.  OpenHPSDR is much more comparable to a Flex 5000 if you're looking at commercial comparisons.  A base model Flex 5000 is worth $2800 or so.

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




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