[Amateur-SIG] SoftRock 5

[Mark Erbaugh]

Well, I've had a little more time to play with the SoftRock 5 on 40m.

1) I moved the radio to a computer with a better soundcard (a Turtle Beach 
Santa Cruz, which was the recommended soundcard for the SDR-1000 when I 
meessed with that a couple of years ago). That made a huge difference.

2) During the day I was able to find som SSB (voice) signals within the 
tuing range of the SR-5 and able to copy them just fine, including some very 
weak DX.

3) I've been unable to get the Powser SDR software with the SoftRock-40 mods 
to work.

4) I did some research on using the USB port to provide power. The USB port 
provides 5.0v. According to Mac, the LM78L05 voltage regulator needs at 
least 2.5v more than the output (5.0v). That would mean it needs 7.5v. Does 
anyone know if the 5.0v provided by a USB port is sufficiently regulated to 
where the voltage regulator could be bypassed and just feed the 5.0 directly 
to the logic on the SR-5.  The Softrock 40 uses USB for power, but I haven't 
looked at its schematic.

5) The 'Rocky' program has a neat feature where the input I/Q signals can be 
recorded to a .WAV file and played back and decoded later.  It's cool to 
tune around and tune in different signals from the same recording (kind of 
like having a VCR that taped all the channels at once and you could play 
back whichever one you wanted. I can bring a .WAV file to the next meeting 
and we can tune around, even if we can't get a signal on the SR-5.

73,
Mark