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Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: R319 on October 09, 2019, 1336 UTC

Title: USB Pirate Station, audio bandwidth
Post by: R319 on October 09, 2019, 1336 UTC

hello,

I wonder what kind of TRX American USB pirate do use for broadcast ?
Is that (un)modified audio bandwidth HAM rig ? Or are they using standard rig with USB cut-off audio bandpass 2,4 or 2,7 k ?

For now, I'm only use AM but it will be funny to make some tests in SSB mode.
Some HAM rigs have very narrow bandwidth about 2,4k wich is too much narrow.
The idea would be to find a rig with 2,7k (or maybe 2,9k) not too expensive for testing. Or bypass the audio filter and limiting bandwidth with equalizer.

Thanks for info

Title: Re: USB Pirate Station, audio bandwidth
Post by: ThaDood on October 09, 2019, 1906 UTC

For straight, out of the box, it's hard to beat most Kenwood transceivers. There are even modifications to open many of those up to 5kHz TX bandwidth, or better. Not just the the high-end, but the low end bass as well.

Title: Re: USB Pirate Station, audio bandwidth
Post by: R4002 on October 10, 2019, 2251 UTC

There's a huge amount of variation between stations as far as mode and bandwidth (and transmitter).  For SSB / USB stations, the usual 2.4 kHz - 2.7 kHz or so is pretty common.  Other US pirates have high end transmitters and do 5 kHz or even 10+ kHz wide SSB signals. 

There are still plenty of American shortwave pirate broadcasters that use good ol' AM. 

Title: Re: USB Pirate Station, audio bandwidth
Post by: Beerus Maximus on October 17, 2019, 1712 UTC

Quote from: ThaDood on October 09, 2019, 1906 UTC

For straight, out of the box, it's hard to beat most Kenwood transceivers. There are even modifications to open many of those up to 5kHz TX bandwidth, or better. Not just the the high-end, but the low end bass as well.

I agree - the Kenwoods are probably the best sounding unmodified transceivers for SSB pirating. The Flex radios sound really good too in SSB but I don't know how easily these go out of band. I wonder if any pirate has used one?

There are lots of resources on the web for setting up Kenwood rigs for good sounding SSB. One bonus with more recent radios (like the TS-590) is that you can feed the radio audio directly over USB from your computer, eliminating a lot of the hassles of trying to feed audio into a mic or aux jack and having to match levels, etc.

Title: Re: USB Pirate Station, audio bandwidth
Post by: Radio Boogie on October 18, 2019, 1601 UTC

I have heard a couple Flex rigs on the air in 43m, so they *can* be modded to do so. However, I have *heard* it has to be done by the supplier and he now asks for creds.

Many Yeasu radios can do fairly wide SSB as well.