{"id":30,"date":"2014-10-18T14:53:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-18T19:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/?p=30"},"modified":"2014-10-18T21:48:34","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T02:48:34","slug":"crosstown-traffic-hackaday-hacklet-19-ham-radio-sdr-foxhunt-attenuator-and-ethernet-to-radio-adapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"Crosstown Traffic: Hackaday Hacklet #19 &#8211; Ham Radio &#8211; SDR, Foxhunt Attenuator, and Ethernet to Radio Adapter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The folks over at Hackaday featured Ham Radio in their <a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.com\/2014\/10\/17\/hacklet-19-ham-radio\/\">latest edition of the Hacklet<\/a>, their weekly newsletter covering projects posted on their<a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.io\/\"> hackaday.io<\/a> site.\u00a0 The first project, titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/3075-rtlsdr-with-upconverter-and-case\">RTL-SDR With Upconverter and Case<\/a>&#8221; features the use of an upconverter to enable the SDR dongle to pick up HF.\u00a0 Pretty handy, considering the stock RTL-SDR has a low limit of about 24 MHz. I <a href=\"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/?p=22\">just picked up one of these SDR dongles<\/a>, so I&#8217;ll have to look into getting the upconverter.<\/p>\n<p>Like fox hunting?\u00a0 Attach the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/2293-ham-radio-fox-hunt-attenuator\">Ham Radio Fox Hunt Attenuator<\/a>&#8221; to your HT to reduce the sensitivity of your portable as you close in on that tiny low-powered transmitter.\u00a0 This one uses a couple of 1K potentiometers abd boasts a &#8220;&#8230;first of its kind variable attenautor vs multiple switches. 1-20 and 21-60 db. with a 3rd option of bypass\/straight through.&#8221;\u00a0 The ones I&#8217;ve used in the past have a bank of switches that switch resistors in an out, so their might be some advantage to the variable unit.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/1538-portablesdr\">PortableSDR<\/a>&#8221; is an open source portable HF plus 2M transceiver with built in GPS functions and vector network analysis to help with those antenna and feedline issues.\u00a0 it looks to have a set of CW paddles on it as well.\u00a0 It was designed for backpacking and camping.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/2507-ethernet-to-radio-adapter\">Ethernet to Radio Adapter<\/a>&#8221; promises to eliminate feedline losses by putting your radio right at the feedpoint of your antenna.\u00a0 As described by W5VO, &#8220;The basic system consists of a single-band direct-conversion I-Q radio, which is then fed to a stereo audio codec. The codec IC is then controlled by an Ethernet connected microcontroller. Power and control is sourced over Ethernet. The whole contraption is then controlled from a computer running soundcard SDR software.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Published from 36,000 feet above somewhere in Tennessee)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The folks over at Hackaday featured Ham Radio in their latest edition of the Hacklet, their weekly newsletter covering projects posted on their hackaday.io site.\u00a0 The first project, titled &#8220;RTL-SDR With Upconverter and Case&#8221; features the use of an upconverter to enable the SDR dongle to pick up HF.\u00a0 Pretty handy, considering the stock RTL-SDR has a low limit of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[180,13,5,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ad8bc.com\/bc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}