After a career in electronics engineering, Tony Parks, KB9YIG, returned to ham radio, after thirty years, to find it very different than when he first started in the 1950s. Upon returning in 2000, Tony discovered software defined radio or SDR, where he saw an opportunity to build starter kits for HF SDR receivers that became the Softrock SDR kits. Tony joins Eric, 4Z1UG to discuss SDR and Softrock. Show Notes: http://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/kb9yig Podcast Link: http://goo.gl/Oe5ARI iTunes Store: http://goo.gl/CvLNmV Stitcher: http://goo.gl/uhf1XZ
Surprised there are no comments yet .... I have not watched the pod-cast but i do use a similar but almost 3X the cost ( i think more-- UHFSDR ) kit type SDR .... Tony has provided a cost effective way to have a low power transceiver .... for what ever band you wish to operate on. Im the odd duck of sorts ... i dont use windows and not even an Intel/AMD based computer ... I use a Quad core Arm7 with Ubuntu and the software i use is Quisk .... They have a few short comings but are free .... Out of all the radios iv owned so far ... the UHFSDR & combo of parts i like the most. Every one would get some enjoyment from a softrock and even more from a Si570 based tunable softrock (though calling it a softrock is incorrect, there is no single locked crystal - but not quite a VFO either)
I'm a softrock and Quisk user. Running it now on my 2009 macbook on osx, but used it for a while under Ubuntu (dual booting). I wound up modifying the software to better utilize pulseaudio over wifi as I use the softrock remotely through a raspberry pi. The macbook does all the heavy lifting, the pi just transfers IQ in out. I love this setup. Next project is building a 20W PA so I can be a little more readable for distant DX. I constantly amazed what 1 watt can do on 20m and 30m.
