Author Archives: Guy Atkins

Eton Elite Satellit HD Receivers – Now Shipping

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Eton Elite Satellit HD

Thanks to commenter Keith on my “Consistently Inconsistent” article, we learn that the Eton Elite Satellit HD receiver is now shipping. Keith purchased the receiver from Amazon.com and is expecting delivery on August 18.

Note that over the half-hour it took me to write this update article, Amazon’s stock of the Elite Satellit HD dropped from 19 to 10!

There are also updates on availability found on three other web sites:

  • Eton Corporation: No longer does their page say “Arriving this month – reserve yours today!”. Instead, the radio is shown as “available today!”
  • Hammacher Schlemmer: their web page indicates “In stock – available for immediate shipment”.   EDIT: Wow, that was quick! Just after I posted this article, HS changed their web page to “We regret that this item is no longer available”.
  • Universal Radio: Gone is the “available late August” statement, and the radio is available for adding to your shopping cart and checkout.

This is great news for those who have awaited the receiver since its announcement in 2019, and especially for those getting the radio at the original pre-order price (myself included :^)

Keith, thanks again for the heads-up on your Elite Satellit HD order. Please leave some first impression comments when you receive it!

A regular contributor to the SWLing Post, Guy Atkins lives in the beautiful Puget Sound country of Washington State.

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Eton’s New Elite Satellit HD – Consistently Inconsistent (Or… Is There A Proofreader in the House?)

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by Guy Atkins

As reported yesterday by Dave Zantow N9EWO and in the SWLing Post, the Eton Elite Satellit HD receiver has left the vaporware zone and arrived in production. Universal-Radio started taking orders on June 28th.

Any new receiver is cause for celebration, but the closer I inspect the available manuals and marketing materials, well, the more questions I have!

I’m sorry Mr. Eton, but it appears your marketing materials are very confused. I’ll need to send you to a proofreading specialist.

I began comparing Eton’s product page for the new receiver, with their own datasheet and owner’s manual… as well as Universal-Radio’s catalog page and photos. The deeper I dug, the less certain I was of the feature set and specifications of this “revival” version of the Eton E1/E1XM receiver.

How best to describe what I was finding? I decided to create a table showing the inconsistencies between the sources / materials.

You can download a PDF version of the above chart here: ELITE SATELLIT HD CHART 
Note that the PDF contains links in the header to the sources of information on Eton’s web site and Universal-Radio’s catalog page.

I’m sure there are more mysteries and puzzlers lurking within the documents and pages referenced above. The biggest question of all, in my opinion, is the circuitry itself. Is the receiver a superheterodyne design as in the original E1/E1XM (with three discrete ceramic I.F. bandwidth filters), or is it a DSP circuit, a la SiLabs-based portable radios with additional (but poorly performing) bandwidths?

I personally hope Eton’s new flagship includes filters that are a copy of those in the original E1/E1XM. They have better shape factors and ultimate rejection prowess than the filters in DSP portable radios on the market today. Coupled with selectable synch-AM and Passband Tuning, they are a powerful combination for fighting interference in a portable receiver.

What do you think about all the conflicts as described in the above table? Perhaps it’s just a jumble of preliminary prototype specs and final features. I hope Eton will take steps soon to bring clarity and consistency to their materials. Also, as Eton’s leading–or only–USA dealer, Universal’s web page should match too.

Please leave your comments below!

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

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New RX-888 MK II SDR Receiver on the Way

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Jinze (Justin) Peng, developer of the high performing, high value RX-888 SDR, has just announced an improved “MK II” version.

I’ve been very pleased with my original RX-888 in all performance aspects, and it’s wideband demodulation and IQ WAV recording have opened up new DXing possibilities (small capacity hard drives need not apply :^)

The new receiver is now appearing on eBay and AliExpress.

Details:

We are pleased to announce the second-gen of RX888. RX888 mkII is the new generation of RX888 with the following improvements and enhancements:

1. Add a tunable (variable) attenuator in the HF path, which can tune from 0 to -31.5dB.

2. Change the fixed LNA of RX888 to a VGA, which gives the -10dB to +33dB range. VGA applies to both HF and VHF.

3. Use the newer generation of tuner chip R828D instead of R820T2.

4. Use an enhanced version of 64M LPF to improve image rejection further.

5. A jumper can select the internal reference clock or an external 27Mhz reference clock.

The primary motivation is giving users smaller granularity control on the RF front-end and a big dynamic range to fit the demands of both strong and weak signals receiving. The tunable range is -41.5dB to +33dB for HF and 0db to 55dB for VHF, which covers most use cases.

During the mkII development, we are working very closely with the original author of BBRF103, IK1XPV, on his new universal driver. The new driver supports RX888 and RX888 mkII now. The new driver can download here: https://github.com/ik1xpv/ExtIO_sddc. And we expect the power of open source will significantly improve the software support and the lifetime of RX888.

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

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BELKA-DX: A Pocket-Sized Radio for Pocket Change

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Well, not pocket change for most people, but I couldn’t pass up a clever headline!

I want to alert SWLing Post readers to a lower cost option for the new BELKA-DX than the Mobimax source: the ecommerce web site of Alex Buevky (EU1ME) who designed the radio.

In early February I bought the original BELKA DSP from the designer’s site, for a total of $117 USD. It arrived safely in 10 days to my Washington State address, with free tracked shipping included.

Yesterday I ordered the new BELKA-DX from the same web site, and the grand total was 340 BYN, or in US Dollars, $128, tracked shipping included.

If I had ordered from Mobimax, the total would have been 176.91 Euro, or $205.76 USD. That price includes FedEx shipping, the only available option to the USA.

Purchasing from the BELKA-DX designer’s web site in Belarus saved me nearly $78, and I’m confident I’ll receive this new model in about a week and a half as before (hopefully no COVID-19 related delays).

I had no issues this time or previously with my payment being “flagged” for security concerns. I used my PayPal VISA card and the transaction completed without issues.

For more information on this tiny powerhouse receiver, see Georges Ringotte’s (F6DFZ) brief review here on the SWLing Post.

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

 

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Video: Uncovering a Buried Co-Channel Station with the New AirSpy SDR# Tool

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AirSpy’s Youssef Touil shares a video from YouTube author “PY3CRX&PY2PLL” which dramatically demonstrates the extent to which the Co-Channel Canceller tool can uncover a much weaker signal beneath a powerful one:

Youssef commented on the video that It only needs some tweaking to the lock/offset to get a perfect decode. So, presumably the result could be even better than heard here.

For more information on the Co-Channel Canceller, see my original article here, and the follow-up piece.

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

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SDR#’s Co-Channel Canceller Gets Additional Options

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In my earlier article, I introduced the Co-Channel Canceller, a unique feature in AirSpy’s SDR# program for the benefit of medium wave DXers.

Now only a day later, software author and AirSpy founder Youssef Touil expands the toolset of Co-Channel Canceller with I.F. Offset and Channel Bandwidth controls.

To download this latest release, click here to go to AirSpy’s downloads page.

It’s my hope that AirSpy will publish a tutorial or YouTube video(s) with step-by-step examples to help with using this unique feature. Until then, it’s certainly fun to try!

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

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AirSpy SDR#’s New Killer Feature: the Co-Channel Canceller

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An example of an AirSpy SDR# software screen.

A version of AirSpy’s popular SDR# software, showing the dark mode interface introduced in 2019. SDR# is always evolving, and the latest new tool is the Co-Channel Canceller.

It’s easy to take for granted the magical math that happens in Software Defined Radio. Occasionally though a breakthrough occurs which really grabs our attention, thanks to the hard work and bright minds of the designers behind the receivers and the software.

On the software side, the first series of “wow” moments happened for me in 2007-2008 when Nico Palermo of Perseus SDR fame expanded the program’s alias-free bandwidth incrementally from a modest (but impressive for the time) 100 kHz all the way up to the current 1600 kHz coverage.

The top-end 1600 kHz bandwidth was a game changer which allowed  medium wave DXers the opportunity to record IQ-WAV files of the entire band for later review, analysis, and DXing. It’s even more impressive considering this expansion was done without any additional hardware or receiver updates.

What did Nico charge Perseus owners for this incredibly useful expansion of spectrum and waterfall bandwidth? Nothing! The program with its much improved features continued freely available to previous and new Perseus SDR owners.

Now in 2020, Youssef Touil, AirSpy’s hardware and software developer, brings  a “killer feature” to his own SDR program named SDR#, for the benefit of medium wave DXers: the Co-Channel Canceller. The cost for this innovative tool? Yep, it’s a free addition to SDR#.

What are the benefits of the Co-Channel Canceller? This question is best answered by listening to three examples published by Youssef on his Twitter feed.

Read the descriptions below and listen to the brief audio files. In each example the Co-Channel Canceller is turned on and off a few times:

For the first example above, I suspect the 594 kHz station is Saudi Arabia’s Radio Riyadh, and the off-channel 596 kHz signal is Al Idaa Al-Watania from Morocco. It’s impressive that the 50 kw 596 station can be uncovered to any degree, as Radio Riyadh is a whopping 2000 kw!

In the AirSpy Groups.io forum, Youssef clearly illustrates the steps needed to initiate the Co-Channel Canceller. I’ve reproduced his screenshots below:

I’ve only just begun to explore the possibilities of the Co-Channel Canceller tool, but it holds promise of helping to reveal and identify hopelessly buried co-channel or adjacent channel stations. Not only does it work “live” in real time reception, it functions well with recorded IQ-WAV files too! Checkout the newest version of SDR# and give this new feature a try. I can imagine situations where this tool could be highly useful at times for the shortwave DXer also.

Thanks, Youssef, for this brilliant tool, which you’ve included free with the newest SDR# !

I encourage radio hobbyists to support AirSpy’s efforts to advance the state-of-the-art. The diminutive AirSpy HF+ Discovery receiver is not only a reasonably priced SDR to use with SDR#, it’s a top performer and a recipient of the World Radio TV Handbook’s Best Value SDR award for 2020.

Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington.  He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.

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