Category Archives: Software Defined Radio

SDRuno Version 1.3 now has Frequency Scanning feature

Many thanks to Jon Hudson with SDRplay who shares the following announcement:

SDRplay is pleased to announce the release of SDRuno v1.3. This is a major upgrade to SDRuno, which adds a number of important new features and is intended for all RSP models including the now discontinued RSP1.

Major new features include:

Frequency Scanning (for both frequency ranges and stored memory panel lists)
I/Q ? Audio Output (for CW Skimmer for example)
A new configurable IF AGC scheme

For a full list of additions/changes and bug fixes, please see the release notes at: https://www.sdrplay.com/docs/SDRplay_SDRuno_Release_Notes.pdf

This release of SDRuno uses a new version of the Windows Service based API (3.02) and so users that also used other applications such as dump1090 and HDSDR with the previous version of the Windows Service based API (3.01) will need to download and install the latest versions of API, dump1090 and the ExtIO plugin from our website at https://www.sdrplay.com/downloads

We have produced two new video guides which describe the use of the Frequency Scanner and I/Q Output functions. Links to these videos along with many others can be found by going to the SDRplay Applications and support catalogue on https://www.sdrplay.com/apps-catalogue/ , and on our Youtube Channel on https://www.youtube.com/c/SDRplayRSP

However, the two new videos can be viewed directly by going to:

https://youtu.be/ndMWIK1JLbQ (New Features in SDRuno 1.3 – Scanning and AGC)

https://youtu.be/w_pH56aOdE0 (SDRuno IQ output and CW Skimmer guide)

The ExtIO version of SDRuno can still be downloaded from our downloads page and is included in the SDRuno 1.22 release. Make sure to install it in a different directory to 1.3 otherwise it will stop 1.3 from working.

For any questions or help regarding this new release, please contact SDRplay support via our dedicated support system at: https://www.sdrplay.com/support
For any other suggestions, please email [email protected]

Finally, we recommend that all users join our community forum where there is a wealth of knowledge and help available for using our products and software in a wide range of applications and circumstances. This forum can be found at: https://www.sdrplay.com/community

Guest Post: 2019 Henry’s Island DXpedition catches

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Sandipan Basu Mallick (VU3JXD), for sharing the following guest post:

2019 Henry’s Island DXpedition with Perseus – Logs by Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH)

This year’s DXpedition to Henry’s Island on 10th -13th Feb 2019 witnessed some of the finest receivers available in the country. Among them, there were 3 Perseus SDR which made it to this year’s expedition. Powered with Active Mini Whip Antennas, there have been terabytes of recordings of airwaves.

Perseus array

Expedition member Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH) shared some of his loggings with the Perseus during the DXpedition :

HLAZ Korea FEBC on 1566 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Voice of Greece on 9420 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Radio Exterior De Espana on 12030 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

NBC Bougainville on 3325 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Until now we all knew about the pirate stations in Europe and America. However, DXpedition to Bay of Bay of Bengal had some surprise in store for us. Yes, it’s the pirate stations of Bay of Bengal flocking the Medium Wave which were the prized catch. Below are the Bengali Medium Wave Pirate Stations logs

Bengali Medium Wave Pirate Sagardeep No 1, 1272 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Unknown Bengali Medium Wave Pirate 1127 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Unknown Bengali Medium Wave Pirate on 1251 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

Unknown Bengali Medium Wave Pirate 1388 KHz

Click here to view on YouTube.

More About Dxer Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH): http://radiowaveshunter.blogspot.in/

Debanjan Chakraborty (VU3DCH) Scanning the Airwaves

Debanjan Chakraborty, is a self taught DXer from the city of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. In mid 90’s when he came across an article about radio listening and became fascinated by the hobby to scan the airwave for signals from far way land. His first QSL was from Radio Netherlands in 1996 and in over 2 decades now, adding up to a few thousand QSLs in his collection. It was only in 2009 he started his blog RadioWavesHunter http://radiowaveshunter.blogspot.in/ to put up his loggings and QSL collections. Interestingly his blog site has garnered over 12K+ visitors from across the globe. He has also, got some of vintage radios scanning the airwaves. Sony ICF 5900 (1975), Panasonic FR 2200 (1977), Yaesu – Musen FRG-7 (1976 -1980), Kenwood R-1000 (1979) and Sony ICF 2010 (1985) are few from his collection.

Follow blog (http://radiowaveshunter.blogspot.in/) for more about his loggings and QSL archive.

Thank you for sharing your DXpedition videos! Those are some excellent catches! We look forward to your future reports.

Bonito tests the SDRplay RSPduo paired with two high-performance antennas

Radio Deal: ELAD USA’s February sale

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The Elad FDM-DUOr

ELAD has just announced new sale prices on their radios and accessories through their US store. These prices will be valid throughout the month of February.

If I had the spare change, I’d buy the red DUO!

Click here to check out these products online.

A new portable DRM/DAB receiver by Starwaves GmbH

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mangosman, who notes:

There is a new digital receiver available. It can receive DRM in all bands from low, medium, high and band 1 & 2 VHF, as well as DAB+ and analog AM and FM.

It cannot receive HD radio because Xpedia charge licensing fees on every receiver and the market is restricted to USA and Mexico.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DRM-DAB-Digital-Radio-Receiver_11547499.html

Thank you for the tip! It appears this receiver is a product of STARWAVES GmbH, Germany/Switzerland, although I assume it’s manufactured in China based on the bulk order costs.

I’ve reached out to the manufacturer for more details as there are few specifics and no specifications on the Alibaba page.

There are also no details about this radio on the Starwaves website.

If/when we receive more information about this radio, we’ll share it here on the SWLing Post. Stay tuned!

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The NSA’s Software Defined Radio application “RedHawk” is now open source

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Andrew, who writes:

Not kidding, a friend told me that NSA released a bunch of software to open source, the main list being here:

https://code.nsa.gov/

While looking at the list of projects on that page, halfway down the page, I found a project called “RedHawk” which is described as:

“A software-defined radio (SDR) framework designed to support the development, deployment, and management of real-time software radio applications.”

Now, being curious I opened the github link:

https://github.com/redhawksdr

[It] contains quite a number of subprojects, modules and other stuff, then I checked the main “RedHawk” project:

https://github.com/RedhawkSDR/redhawk

Here’s the documentation:

https://redhawksdr.github.io/Documentation/index.html

It seems really interesting; apparently it allows to define a wealth of processing stages (e.g. filters, converters…) and connect them to process signals coming from an SDR; I think it may be a very interesting and useful tool to fiddle/experiment with SDR receivers, if I’m not wrong it may allow to push an SDR to the limits, improving its performance, and may also be useful to write SDR software!

Fascinating! Thank you for the tip, Andrew!

Post Readers: It appears this project has been in the public domain for a little while. Please comment if you’ve tried implementing RedHawk in your SDR system!