Research for newbie

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Radar1
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2018 3:10 pm

Research for newbie

Post by Radar1 » Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:55 pm

Hi everyone

I am doing some research first before buying.

I am interested in purchasing the SDRplay SDR from 100KHz up to 2 GHz 8MHz spectrum (12Bit resulution) HF,VHF,UHF version (The cheaper version)
or the SDRplay RSP2 from 100KHz up to 2 GHz with 3 antenna ports, I'd prefer this version, because of the extra antenna ports.

I am a licensed radio amateur for the past 10 years, my interest in radio began with listening and is still my favorite past time.
I prefer the digital bands, i made many contacts on psk31 and now FT8, running a Icom 738 and homemade 4 ele beams for 10 & 15 meters.

Recently I had to sell up almost my entire HF Dx setup, including my beams, tower and Icom.

I am slowly getting back into amateur radio, but still prefer listening on different modes.

I apologize in advance if my questions have already been answered elsewhere, I've watched a few video's, but my questions haven't entirely been answered.

I've had a SDR Dongle for some time now, actually had two, Things I like to do:

Monitor Plane Radar - Am running my SDR with Virtual Radar Server
Decode weather Sats - Using WX to IMG Software
Try to decode trunking - Unitrunker, but I need another SDR, not working yet

My friend is running a SDR Flex radio as a receiver for his HF Radio setup - getting much better reception on the flex and far quieter on receiver because of the filters that can be switched in.

I am running a Lenovo 2.6 Ghz desktop with 8 GB Ram and Windows 7 64 Bit.

Questions:


Question 1

I have watched the video where it shows that when running SDRuno software, its possible to open a number of VRX Receivers
I saw a posting earlier on this forum that version 2 of this software "may" include a scanning version ?
I see I can store various frequencies to memory, so can these frequencies be scanned ? if yes, how fast ?
I guess what I am asking is could I user a this receiver as a Scanner ? I am thinking like the old Icom PCR1000 software ?

Question 2

VRX Receivers
A number of Virtual Receivers can be opened up, running off the single SDR Receiver, I think the max is 12, I want to know, could I like run one virtual receiver, and leave it scanning the Airband, and open another Virtual Receiver and have it sitting for instance on 1090 Mhz feeding VRS ?

Could I then also open a third Virtual receiver and have it monitoring the Ham Bands ?

I believe the receiver is two complete receivers in one, one for HF and one for VHF - UHF
So when running multiple VRS Receivers, would it be possible to do this ?
Also, realistically speaking, how many VRS Receivers could I envisage running on my pc ? Without having to upgrade it first :shock:

Question 3

Audio
So currently my SDR Dongle uses my internal Realtek sound card for its output, I am running a USB sound card interface for pc sound etc.
When running multiple copies of VRS, do I need to have multiple sound card interfaces ? or can I connect these via "Virtual audio" cables ?

Question 4

Can I run this receiver with my HF Radio for running the digital modes, I guess I shouldn't be asking this question, because the answer will be yes.

Question 5

Add ons and open development community
Having read a lot of comments on this forum moving from highly disappointed to a Fantastic Receiver, I want to make the best choice, as this will be a pretty expensive purchase for me, in as far as buying amateur radio toys for myself goes.

How does this receiver compare to the Icom PCR1000 or let say a Kenwood R2000 or high end hardware receiver ?

Are there any add ons planned for the future ?

Skinning
What I'd like to see is the community being able to build new skins with extra functionality into the software
A typical skin would be a Radio Scanner look alike, like the WinRadio G315 or the Icom PCR1500 or the Icom ICR9500 ?
Maybe a contest for developers to come up with new Skins ?

Add ons or plug ins for adding functionality like CTCSS Decoder or Level meter ?

Ok, thats me,
Let the comments roll in.... :)
Last edited by Radar1 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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Radar1
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2018 3:10 pm

Re: Research for newbie

Post by Radar1 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:37 am

WHAT ?
Has NOBODY even got a comment on my posting ?
I guess I should look at a different make receiver ?
Moderator / Forum Admin / Technical Support ?

anybody ?
Last edited by Radar1 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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sdrplay
Posts: 978
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 7:58 am

Re: Research for newbie

Post by sdrplay » Sat Aug 04, 2018 6:29 am

This is a community forum, we try to comment on posts when we can, but for support from us specifically, the best thing is to always raise a ticket: https://www.sdrplay.com/support - I'll try to comment on your questions...

Q1 - In our own software, SDRuno, scanning is coming in the next release. We have a roadmap here: https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewt ... f=6&t=3314

Q2 - SDRuno can have up to 16 VRX running in a single instance. In practice this will probably be more dependent on processing power and how much bandwidth you need to visualise within each VRX. Each receiver can process up to 10 MHz of spectrum at a time. The RSPduo has 2 tuners and if you use them at the same time, each tuner can independently process up to 2 MHz of spectrum. Each tuner can tune to one frequency (the LO) at a time. You can then specify a virtual offset from the LO in each VRX (within the bandwidth of the received spectrum) to demodulate a VFO.

Q3 - Each VRX has it's own audio output, you can use virtual audio cables to connect to other post processing applications. Each VRX output is independent.

Q4 - You can use this in conjunction with other digital decoding software.

Q5 - We don't express a view on how good our products are to others. There are plenty of reviews on youtube or review sites such as eham.net for you to gain a good independent view on where our products sit from a price/performance point of view.

Best regards,

SDRplay

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Radar1
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2018 3:10 pm

Re: Research for newbie

Post by Radar1 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 6:13 pm

Hi

Many thanks for the reply

Much appreciated
Last edited by Radar1 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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