Can I ask a stupid question?

[m0phe]

I reecently bought an SDRPlay and am really pleased with it.

My last real contact with serious radios was back in the 70s when I was a radio officer in the merchant navy and we used kit like the Mackay Marine 3021A or the STC 5000.

They all had a variable RF gain control which was probably the most useful knob on the set! Does the SDRPlay have any form of continuously variable RF gain at all? I'm using it with SDR#.

Sorry if this is a dumb question

[Tech_Support]

Hi m0phe,
The RSP doesn't have continuously variable gain. It uses an all digital gain adjustment scheme that allows the gain to be changed in 1 dB steps. You certainly can adjust the gain manually if you don't want to use AGC. To do this, open up the ExtIO window in SDR sharp and uncheck the AGC box. You can use the gain slider to manually adjust the gain or even simply type a number in the gain reduction window. Please note that the number specified is the gain REDUCTION from maximum gain. Please also take careful note of the LNA gain reduction threshold. This is the where the LNA gain reduction step is switched in.

The following document explains a lot more about the way the gain is controlled and how AGC is implemented in the RSP:

http://www.sdrplay.com/docs/SDRplay_AGC ... e_r2p2.pdf

Sincerely

SDRplay Tech_Support

[m0phe]

Thanks. I come from the land of superhets and crystal filters and it's all a bit new and strange