[450] Very Strong 70cm Beacon

[George Andrews]

John,

PSE send photo and audio capture! I don't really have interest in SDR
transceivers, but can see the value of an SDR receiver, especially the band
scope capability. I am looking forward to tinkering around with this stuff.
May have to move the discone outside. It is currently in the attic.

George

-----Original Message-----
From: 450-bounces at lists.vhfwiki.com [mailto:450-bounces at lists.vhfwiki.com]
On Behalf Of John Foege
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 5:07 PM
To: 450 at lists.vhfwiki.com
Subject: Re: [450] Very Strong 70cm Beacon

The stick works pretty well. I use mine with SDR Sharp (freeeware) on
Windows. I have two. One tunes a range of 50-2200 Mhz (with the Elonics
E4000 tuner chip) and the other one I have has an FC0013 Tuner and does
22-1200 or something if I recall correctly.

Obviously with the I and Q samples getting fed directly into the computer,
you can decode any mode, so long as there is software to do it with. SDR
Sharp does your standard NFM, AM, USB/LSB, WFM, and CW U / CW L. It sounds
good on all modes and the RTL232 chip dumps in about a 2 MHz or 2.3 MHz wide
swath of the band at once. It's very wide and makes, like Dave said, an
awesome band scope for $15.00. I imagine pairing a stick like this with a
broadband discone antenna that also is tuned to receive in the 50-2200 Mhz
region and you'd have the worlds cheapest and best scanner setup :P

I have seen the HF converters for it as well on eBay for around 70 Euro or
something. Definitely worth taking a look at.

I made an adapter to go from the PAL antenna connector on the stick to a
PL-259 and have some leftover gold plated PAL to F connectors if anyone is
interested. (I had to do PAL to F female - then F male to BNC femalce - then
I have a pigtail BNC to PL259). The Frankenadapter actually doesn't look
nearly as bad as it sounds. Dave has seen it.

I've yet to hook the thing up to my loop in the tree...but I might just do
that later tonight. I'd be interested in what I can hear.

All in all, I can highly recommend it. For the price it's a lot of fun and
highly versatile. I've seen guys using these for just about any thing you
can imagine.

If anyone wants pic of the setup or audio captures etc., just let me know!

Cheers,

John

PS

Anyone hearing the K1IIG beacon down around 60 Mhz as well?
Sent from BlackBerryR from Vodafone

-----Original Message-----
From: "George Andrews" <gandrews at ntplx.net>
Sender: 450-bounces at lists.vhfwiki.comDate: Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:42:02 
To: <450 at lists.vhfwiki.com>
Reply-To: 450 at lists.vhfwiki.com
Subject: Re: [450] Very Strong 70cm Beacon

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