[Amateur-SIG] Softrock 5 Radio

[Bill Serra]

Mark

I plan to write him tonight, and try to get QSD and 40 and 20 meter BPF 
kits ordered tonight.

Bill Serra
N8NRT

Mark Erbaugh wrote:
> A while back the Ham Radio SIG considered building the Softrock 40 SDR radio
> receiver as a project. The Softrock 40 is a Quadrature Sampling Detector
> (QSD)  based radio that samples RF down to 11 kHz or so that can be fed to a
> computer soundcard and demodulated with DSP software running on the
> computer. Unfortunately, before we could decide to make a group purchase,
> all the kits were sold out and no further kits were planned.
> 
> At the SW Ohio Digital Symposium this past Saturday, there was a
> demonstration of the Softrock 5. This is a similar QSD receiver. The
> difference is that the QSD has been separated from the frequency source and
> band pass filtering. Plug in boards with oscillator and BPF are available
> for both 40 and 20. Builders are also encouraged to build their own OSC/BPF.
> In fact, with a suitable variable frequency source, the receiver could be
> tunable (the 40m BPF actually covers both 40 and 30m).  There are several
> freely available software packages that will work with the signals this
> produces.
> 
> Tony Parks, KB9YIG, has produced kits for the QSD and OSC/BPF. The QSD kit
> is $19 and the OSC/BPF kits are $7.50 including shipping. As of this
> morning, he had about 100 left but he says that he sold about 30 in the last
> few days. I suspect that the demo at the Digital Symposium may create some
> more interest.
> 
> Tony will take orders via email with payment through PayPal, or check or MO.
> His email and PayPal account are raparks at ctcisp.com
> 
> For a working receiver, you need to build the QSD kit and at least one
> OSC/BPF (40m or 20m) or possibly build your own OSC/BPF. For two band
> operation, you could build one QSD and two OSC/BPF kits which could be
> swapped out (they plug in) or you could, as I am planning to do, build two
> QSD boards.  Most of the assembly uses through hole parts, but there are two
> SMT (surface mount) chips that need to be soldered on.
> 
> Because of the possibility of getting sold out, I recommend that if you are
> interested in building the kit, you contact Tony directly and order what you
> want. I don't think we have time to coordinate a group purchase. Then at the
> next SIG meeting we can discuss how we want to proceed. If enough people buy
> the kits, we can plan a meeting to assemble them. If not, those who do build
> the kits can get together outside of the SIG and then show off the finished
> projects at a SIG meeting.
> 
> Please send me an email with your interest by Wednesday (1/18) night. I'll
> check my email first thing Thursday morning and put out an email with the
> results.  Please let me know if you have ordered your kit(s) or are only
> want to proceed if there is enough other interest in the SIG.
> 
> For the record, I have already ordered 2 QSD and 1 each of the 40m and 20m
> OSC/BPF kits for myself. I plan on building them whether or not the SIG
> does.
> 
> 73,
> Mark
> 
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> 


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