HFU HF Underground

Technical Topics => SDR - Software Defined Radio => Topic started by: Oliver on April 08, 2017, 1801 UTC

Title: AIRSPY & SPYVERTER: An excellent performer on HF
Post by: Oliver on April 08, 2017, 1801 UTC
Nice rewiew by Nils Schiffhauer!

Always being interested in SDRs with remarkable HF performance, Airspy and the matching up-converter, namely SpyVerter, attracted me. It is a 10-bit SDR, covering 24 MHz to 1.800 MHz (just Airspy) plus 1 kHz to 60 MHz by help of SpyVerter (+120 MHz). Both come in solid metal cases.

I did test this combo in detail on HF, i.e. under 30 MHz. It proofs to be a sensitive setup with a surprisingly dynamic range, ending up in clear recpetion of up to a nearly 10 MHz wide band. This may be recorded and eventually played “as live”.

The test has been published on 19 pages plus 25 instructive illustrations, and the PDF can be dowloaded here https://dk8ok.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/airspy-and-spyverter.pdf.
 It is a real hands-on test in real practice. This includes also weak signal reception of data, demodulating and decoding of 24 HFDL airband channels in parallel, DRM and FAX decoding (KVM70/Honolulu) and reception of Auckland VOLMET von 6.679 kHz via long path.

The result ist simply stunning: if you are in search for a “low cost, high perfomance SDR”, that’s exactly is it. Yes – Youssef and his team advertise it with this claim, but it is one of the rare cases where such a claim meets reality. Be surprised, become convinced!