Bonito’s new high and low pass filters

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Dennis Walter at Bonito has just informed me about two new product’s they’re offering: high and low pass filters. From the Bonito blog:

LP060 Low Pass Filter

The elliptically-formed low pass filter LP060 from NTi suppresses all frequencies above 60 MHz. Highly effective antennas combined with near-by strong FM stations often overburden the input of the radio and cause interference and phantom signals.

The LP060 was developed aiming at the highest possible suppression in the 88MHz – 108 MHz FM band, whereas as the 6m amateur radio band at 50MHz is still totally within the pass band. For the greatest possible effectiveness, the low pass filter should be inserted directly before the receiver input.

Attenuation values (typ.):
52MHz: -1dB
60MHz: -3dB
80 MHz: -55dB
88-110 MHz: -90dB
110-150MHz: -75dB
150-200MHz: -70dB
200-400MHz: -65 dB

Dimension: 88mm x 31mm x 25mm (3,46 x 1,22 x 0,98 inch)

Input and output are DC-blocked (max. 50V DC)

Attention: Only suitable for reception, high HF (>10dbm) will cause permanent damage! When using end-fed active antennas: Because the filter is DC-blocked, it has to be inserted between the receiver input and the power inserter.

Successfully tested with: Elad FDM-S1 and FDM-S2, FiFi-SDR1.0 and 2.0, PM-SDR, Winradio Excalibur, RFSpace SDR-IQ

HP0020 High Pass Filter

The elliptically-formed high pass filter HP0020 suppresses all frequencies below 2 MHz. Strong or near-by transmitters in the long- or medium wave range can cause interferences and intermodulation in the shortwave range, which can effectively be suppressed with this filter. The HP0020 filter is very steep, so that signals in the upper medium wave range are already suppressed effectively. For the greatest possible effectiveness, the low pass filter should be inserted directly before the receiver input.

Attenuation values (typ.):
<0.50 MHz:-55dB
1.0MHz: -45dB
1.6 MHz:-35dB
2.0MHz: -3dB
>2.5 MHz: -1dB

Input and output are DC-blocked (max. 50V DC)

Dimensons: 88mmx31mmx25mm (3,46 x 1,22 x 0,98 inch)

Attention: Only suitable for reception, high HF (>10dbm) will cause permanent damage!
Because the filter is DC-blocked, it has to be inserted between the receiver input and the power inserter.

Click here to read the full press release on Bonito’s blog, or purchase via Bonito’s web store. I imagine Universal Radio will start stocking these soon as well.

Thanks for the shout out, Click!

Shortwave Radio Recordings: Voice of Turkey, English language service

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For your listening pleasure: the Voice of Turkey English language service.

This program was recorded on June 7, 2015, starting around 2205 UTC on 9830 kHz. I started recording the program a few minutes after the top of the hour when a digital transmission on the same frequency finally went off air. I made this recording with the TitanSDR Pro hooked up to my horizontal delta loop antenna.

You will actually hear a few seconds of the digital broadcast at the very beginning of the recording. Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

99% Invisible: “Voices on the Wire”

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Many of you know that I’m a huge fan of 99% Invisible–a podcast and radio show about “design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.”

This past week, 99% Invisible’s episode, Voices on the Wire, featured Tony Schwartz, a recording pioneer, and Frank Conrad, a broadcasting pioneer. While not specifically about shortwave radio, you’ll hear how the ether weaved its way through both of their histories.

I should mention that Roman Mars, creator of 99% Invisible, is quite a fan of shortwave radio. Indeed, in the past, he’s featured our friend, David Goren, of Shortwaveology.net.

You can listen to Voices on the Wire and read the show notes on 99% Invisible’s website. Click here to download the episode as an MP3 file, or simply listen via the embedded SoundCloud player below:

Note that the Tony Swartz segment was originally produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, from their series Lost and Found Sound; the segment on Frank Conrad was originally produced by Radio Diaries.

And, hey…if you happen to be chatting with Roman Mars anytime soon, ask him to do more shows on shortwave radio: a technology I consider to be the ultimate invisible medium!

The Panasonic RF-2200: an early birthday gift

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This week, I purchased a radio that I have lusted after for years: the Panasonic RF-2200.

I justified this eBay purchase because June is my birthday month and…well…do I need anymore justification!?! Just look at this beautiful analog dial:

In truth, I’ve been wanting a benchmark portable medium wave receiver for ages, and I believe there are few better than the venerable RF-2200.

I picked the RF-2200 this morning and I’ve only had it on the air a few minutes. It effortlessly picked up my local benchmark medium wave and FM stations. The audio fidelity is brilliant and the ‘2200 appears to have a very low noise floor. I haven’t had a moment to truly cruise the shortwave bands, but I plan to over the course of this week and shall report back.

The Siru Innovatios SDR20 multi-touch portable SDR

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A few weeks ago, at the Four Days In May conference (held alongside the Dayton Hamvention) I met Jarkko Mäkivaara from the Finnish company Siru.

Jarkko was demonstrating the SDR20: a radio that immediately grabbed my attention from across the room. The SDR20 is a fully portable, robust, multi-touch portable SDR transceiver.

The screen on the SDR20 is as responsive as an iPad and fully developed around SDR functionality. While Jarkko didn’t have an HF signal of any sort inside the hotel convention room, I was able to play with the interface a bit, which I found rather intuitive.

(Source: Siru)

The SDR20’s product brochure lists some of its features:

2-channel transceiver operation
Two methodologies for implementation: IQ Mod / Demod and Direct Down and Direct Up (DDC, DUC) conversion
Up to 200MHz bandwidth per channel
100mW transmit power. Higly efficient 1kW exciter available separately.
Frequency range covers DC to 2.5 GHz
State of the art Altera Cyclone SOC-FPGA (Including dual-ARM9 Cortex)
Graphics Prosessor accelerated Multi-Touch screen with a slick user interface
GNURadio, C++ API/Python, VHDL/Verilog/High Level Synthesis sandbox
High-speed ethernet interface for computer connection
Internal clock 20 PPS
Coherent operation with external clock source (GPS, Rubidium etc.)
Rugged and stylish enclosure / Rack mount

Of course, the SDR20 is truly designed for industrial and government/military applications, thus it carries a price tag reflective of those markets: €3,395.00 (about $3,800 USD).

Still, seeing the SDR20 gives me hope that multi-touch, portable SDRs will become more commonplace as capacitive screens, processors, DSP chips and solid state storage continue to decline in price. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Siru is able to lower the price on future iterations of their portable SDR line.

If you would like to take a look at some of the SDR20’s specifications, check out this PDF product sheet and the video embedded below. Of course, you’ll find even more information and updates on Siru’s website. The SDR20 has shipped to Beta testers and should begin full production in the fall.

https://vimeo.com/122629896