We have had quite a few people blowing up their RSPs over the past few months.   Most people understand that there is a practical limit as to how much RF energy can be allowed to enter from the antenna socket to the delicate circuitry within.  We try to make sure everyone understands that this must not exceed 0dBM ( 1mW) of RF power – a higher level of 10dBM (10mw) is acceptable for short periods.  Most people know not to connect the RSP to a transmitting antenna.

However, what is sometimes less well understood is this:

1. Disconnecting the USB while leaving an antenna connected which is presenting signals stronger than 10dBM to the RSP antenna input, does not help matters – if anything it makes it worse since the RSP is designed to have the USB connected to ensure the antenna switches are powered up in a  known state.
2. Tuning the RSP to a different part of the RF spectrum than the frequency of a potentially damaging transmission makes no difference whatsoever since the damage is caused by heating effects which will exist at any frequency (it’s not like adding a traditional attenuation as would be the case if you were mechanically switching in say, a chunky resonant LC circuit tuned away from the transmitter frequency).

Please take care to use proven protection techniques such as using protected RF or IF outputs from transceivers when using the RSP as a Panadapter, using a protection device or ensuring if connected to a dedicated receiver antenna that it is positioned such that the total energy received by the RSP remains below the oDBm level.

There are lots of discussions on our forum on the topic – just go to www.sdrplay.com/community/index.php and search with words like “protection” to find comments on the subject and links to recommended techniques.

Or join the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sdrplay and describe what you are trying to do, to get real advice from other users who have found successful ways of ensuring they don’t fry their RSPs.

The support team will be available over the weekend, throughout  Christmas week and into the new year, to help with any problems you may have if you are lucky enough to receive an RSP as a gift!

Please be patient since it may be a busy time, but all support tickets will be followed up as soon as possible.    The first steps are to check the documentation (download from https://sdrplay.com/downloads/ ) and to look at the video guides on our YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/SDRplayRSP   but if you still need help, raise  a support ticket by going to http://www.sdrplay.com/support/

By the way, this excellent video by SevenFortyOne is fully up to date showing the “out of the box” experience in for a newcomer setting up a new RSP with our  SDRuno software – start watching 4 minutes into the video  – https://youtu.be/9cxkwF1Dp6k

If your problems relate to specific radio applications or wider technical questions, the Independent Facebook Group and the Community forum are excellent sources of help from other SDRplay users.  With over 7000 members you can usually get a helpful  response very quickly.

Over on YouTube, Mike Kokotov has released a video comparison of the RSP1A in action on  VLF, LW and NDB bands using actual signals received in Macedonia.  The RSP1A is seen to perform really well in comparison to other popular SDRs – this is particularly significant when you consider that the RSP1A can process up to 10 MHz of spectrum, anywhere between 1kHz and 2GHz. The video can be found here: https://youtu.be/kZy3TaodeMs

Apologies to those of you who have been waiting for the availability of the second batch of RSP1As . Since launching the RSP1A in November, we have been overwhelmed with orders and we, together with our 4 channel partners and their resellers ran out of stock last week.   Our manufacturing subcontractor has been busy and we are now getting more units which are being shipped out to our channel partners as quickly as possible – those who ordered stock should have stock by early next week at the latest.  Those who pre-ordered directly from SDRplay.com should get their transactions completed and units shipped by then as well.

We are encouraging our resellers to make sure they place orders either on us or one of our channel partners for January deliveries now, so if you are thinking of buying an RSP in early 2018, please tell your stockist so they can reserve stock via us for you.

Our channel partners are HAM Radio Outlet (USA Amateurs),  SDR-Kits, ML&S (UK Amateurs) and RS Components.  The full list of SDRplay resellers can be found here: https://sdrplay.com/distributors/

RSP2s and RSP2pros are also selling fast during this holiday season.  It seems the world is waking up to SDR receivers 🙂

We wish all our customers, old and new, a very Happy Christmas!

Mike and Andy from SDRplay and Katie Allen from Ham Radio Outlet, were guests on last night’s popular  Tuesday night “Amateur Round Table” on  W5KUB.com  in the USA.  The whole show can be downloaded from:

The SDRplay session starts after 57 minutes in

Links to the SDRuno Video Guides Mike refers to in the programme can be found at: https://sdrplay.com/video-guides/

The SDRplay YouTube channel can be found on: www.youtube.com/c/SDRplayRSP

In this video, Mike demonstrates how to get started with HDSDR v2.76 along with the RSP1A. This video is one of many available from the SDRplay YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SDRplayRSP

HDSDR remains one of the most popular widely-used SDR software packages and we are grateful to developers Mario and LC for their continuing support for the growing RSP family.    SDRplay is proud to be listed as one of the recommended hardware suppliers for users of HDSDR- visit their Hardware page at: http://www.hdsdr.de/hardware.html