There’s a video guide on the process of setting up the Raspberry Pi3 with an RSP over on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WvcbnoaYnL8

Wishing all our customers a Happy Easter.  For direct customers, we will be shipping again starting Tuesday April 3rd.   We have been enjoying some new videos which have been popping up on YouTube on the “Tech Minds” Channel – the latest of these is a short history of RTTY followed be a demo using an RSP1A and Digital Master:

Right now we are awaiting the demise of the Chinese Space Station which will imminently fall to earth creating quite a “meteor shower”  – we’re looking forward to some amateur reports or video clips of signal reflections picked up using RSPs!   As I write this there’s just over a day to go – see:  Click here for SatView

With the 10MHz of visible spectrum, the RSP family of SDR receivers is ideal for monitoring more than one amateur or broadcast band, so long as they both fall within a single 10 MHz spectrum window.  SDRuno is great for giving easy “out of the box” access to any one specific band with that band nicely “framed” to fill the Spectrum window.  However if you want to monitor multiple bands, this video is perfect for explaining how to do that.  It also illustrates to Mac users, how well SDRuno runs on a Mac under Parallels.

More and more people are exploring the new digital modes possible in the amateur bands.  In this “Tech Minds”  YouTube Video, the author introduces the topic and shows how simple it is to use an SDRplay RSP to get up and running with FT8 decoding.  It’s  a perfect way to explore whether you want to get more involved.  It’s then a case of migrating to a transceiver or going for a nice hybrid solution combining the huge bandwidth of the SDR for receive, with your existing transceiver for transmit.   As you explore options, the Facebook group and the SDRplay forums are perfect for helping decide what’s best for you.

I’m happy to report that we now have RSP1A stock again and our network of channel partners and resellers should all have stock that they were waiting for by early next week (week of March 12th)

Our channel partners are:

The full list of distributors and resellers can be found here:  https://sdrplay.com/distributors/

We also ship to most countries using DHL, direct from the UK.  To see what the cost of any tax we must charge plus the cost of shipping is, go to our purchasing page  and select your country and the quantity of whichever RSP(s) you are interested in.   You won’t be charged until the very end of the process.  We accept US dollars and GB pounds only so exchange rates to other currencies will vary. Your credit card provider may make a small additional charge for purchasing in a different currency to that of your own country.

Our purchasing page can be found here: https://sdrplay.com/purchase/

Note to potential resellers – if you want to stock our products please get in touch via our contact form on http://www.sdrplay.com/support/

The RSP1A covers the spectrum from 1kHz to 2GHz,  and phantom signals can be a menace for all wideband SDR receivers.  More and more is being published about the most obvious culprit which is inter-modulation caused by very strong interferers such as MW/FM broadcast transmitters – indeed, all the current SDRplay RSPs have built in filters to help reduce the problems caused by that.

But the reality is, particularly at HF and below, that a phantom signal may occur  for other reasons such as higher order mixing effects.  Sometimes, it can be difficult to know what is the cause of the phantom signal.  If you can understand the cause, there are additional steps you can take to overcome it.

We’ve just published this white paper to explain the difference between intermodulation and higher-order mixing effects, and what practical steps you can take to reduce the latter in particular. Our example uses an RSP1A operating at frequencies below 60MHz

Here’s a link to the paper: https://sdrplay.com/docs/SDRplay_Optimising_Performance_RSP1A_LF_MW_HF.pdf

Usually in January and February, there is a bit of a lull in sales but this year we have been exceptionally busy.  So much so, that we have temporarily run out of RSP1As – we hope to be restocking distributors and resellers next week.  Our list of distributors and resellers can be found here:  https://sdrplay.com/distributors/

Some people have accused us of being a bit biased towards the lower end of the 1kHz to 2GHz spectrum coverage we support, but it’s worth noting that the outstanding performance of the RSPs at VHF and UHF continues to delight new users. We’ve noticed a lot of recent enthusiasm around satellite imaging and here’s a nice screenshot recently posted by Jan Henning Holmedal Lustrup on the independent SDRplay Facebook Group after a successful EMR (Moonbounce) contact on 1296MHz using his RSP2pro as the receiver.

Above: Jan’s screenshot     Below: the moon in my Wellbrook loop 😉

I am hoping to build up an FAQ section on the SDRplay website to address the many common questions which we get on the support desk, or which are answered so eloquently in the FaceBook group or on our own moderated community forum.  If you haven’t already joined, I encourage you to join one of these very useful communities and watch this space for more news about FAQs.