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

[Erik Anderson]

Okay, thank you all for giving me a better picture of what is out there and
some paths to go down.  After Lester's initial post I also found the wiki
page that someone drew together on the hpsdr website for hooking up the
tokyo hy-power to the penny as well.

I do appreciate the time taken and hope that there's enough patience out
there for my learning curve here.

Erik KE7YOA

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Jeremy McDermond
<mcdermj at xenotropic.com>wrote:

> 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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