Airspy New Year Competition: Comment to win Airspy and SpyVerter Prizes!

The team behind the Airspy have given us permission to give away three Airspy related prizes for the New Year Holidays! The first prize is an Airspy R2 + Spyverter, the second prize is an Airspy Mini + Spyverter and the third prize is a Spyverter.

The Airspy is a high performance yet low cost software defined radio with a 12-bit ADC and tuning range between 24 – 1800 MHz. It is an attractive device as its dynamic range exceeds all other SDRs in a similar price range. Its performance begins to approach that of the very high end expensive SDRs. High dynamic range means that weak and strong signals can coexist in the received spectrum without any overload occurring. We have previously written reviews of the Airspy R2 and Airspy Mini on our blog.

The Spyverter is a high performance upconverter that allows the Airspy to tune to LF/MW/HF frequencies between DC – 30 MHz. The Spyverter perfectly compliments an Airspy device as it is also a very high dynamic range device. It also works perfectly with the bias tee on our RTL-SDR.com V1/V2/V3 dongles. We previously reviewed the Spyverter here.

More information about these products can be found at airspy.com.

How to Enter

Competition is now finished. Winners will be announced and emailed shortly. Thanks to all who entered!

Winners: 

Larry (Airspy R2 + SV)
If I am going to win something from this one stuff, me build internet remote receiver on hill in central Europe (CZ) for all readers and fans of rtl-sdr.com website, generally for all RTL SDR enthusiasts….. :-)))
Pour Felicitér 2017
Larry (Ladislav)

kevin (Airspy Mini + SV)
been a ham a couple years now. their are so many uses for sdr’s ! it’s so cool. just looking down the list of others comments, i was like ‘oh ya’ forgot about that idea. awhile back we did a demo at our ham club with a el cheapo sdr and it sparked some interest , would like to play around with some of the newest toys, worlds of diff in capabilities. ultimate goal is to find the right one for the clubs emergency trailer. seeing the bands and whats going on, is priceless 🙂

Josh (SpyVerter)
I’d love to finally get into the HF band!

The winners were randomly selected using random.org, and all have now been emailed. If you’re a winner, please check your email and spam folder just in case.

Thank you all for participating! It’s really great to see all the variety in what projects people are doing. There were about 500 valid entries resulting in about a 0.6% chance of winning. Keep an eye out for future contests!

Simply make a comment on this post explaining what you’d do like to do with an Airspy or Spyverter if you won one.

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE COMMENT FORM.
The address will only be visible to us, and we promise not to use it for any other purpose.

Rules: The winners will be selected at random. One entry per person only. You must legally be allowed to receive the prize.

Draw closes in one week on 3 January 2017, 11:59PM UTC Time.

airspy_giveaway2

Radio For Everyone new Posts: RTL-SDR Accessories, 5 Easy Mods, FAQ, Legal/Moral Issues and Portable SDR

Akos from the radioforeveryone.com blog (previously sdrformariners/rtlsdrforeveryone) has recently added several new posts. The first new post is a beginners guide to RTL-SDR accessories. In this post he shows and links to his reviews of various RTL-SDR accessory products such as upconverters, baluns, filters, preamps and adapters.

In the second post he shows a guide to 5 easy mods that can be performed on RTL-SDR dongles which will improve their performance. The mods include using a ground plane, using a wire antenna, extending the coax, removing the IR and LED diodes, and putting the dongle into a metal tin.

In the third post he discusses portable software defined radio and shows exactly what products and software you need to set up a an Android or Raspberry Pi based mobile SDR station.

In the remaining new posts Akos has created an RTL-SDR FAQ and a guide to understanding the legal and moral issues of SDR. Finally the last new post we saw is where Akos tests a cooled RTL-SDR V3 vs a stock V3. His results appear to show that the cooled dongle achieves slightly more (avg. 3.73%) position reports.

Akos' guide to RTL-SDR Accessories.
Akos’ guide to RTL-SDR Accessories.

Decapping the R820T and RTL2832U Chips

Over on YouTube the electronupdate channel has posted a video showing the decapping of the R820T and RTL2832U chips. Decapping is the process of removing the plastic packaging on integrated circuit chips, thus exposing the internal circuits printed on the silicon die for viewing. In the video he shows microscope images of each of the decapped chips and explains a bit about what each part of the chip does.

Over on his blog he’s also posted the full decapped images of the R820T and RTL2832U for viewing.

The decapped R820T tuner die.
The decapped R820T tuner die.
SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO TEARDOWN: R820/RTL2832U DECAP

3D Printing an RTL-SDR Cooler Block

Over on the 3D printing sharing site Thingiverse, user “Way” has uploaded a 3D printer design for an RTL-SDR cooler block. The block works by allowing a PC cooling fan to blow air efficiently over the dongle body, removing any heat generated.

Cooling a dongle helps to avoid the L-Band problem, which is when R820T/2 units get hot and stop working about ~1.3-1.5 GHz. Generally passive cooling is enough (like with the thermal pad and metal cases used on our V3 dongles), but further cooling can apparently help increase sensitivity slightly although we are unsure if there is any statistically significant difference.

“Way” has made two designs, one to fit a 40 x 40 mm fan, and another to fit a 50 x 50 mm fan. The fan simply screws to the top of the block, and the dongle is placed at the bottom. Air is ducted over the dongle body and escapes out the back.

RTL-SDR 3D Printed Cooler
RTL-SDR 3D Printed Cooler

Analyzing HF Over the Horizon Radar in GNU Radio

Over the Horizon radar is typically used at HF frequencies and is used to detect targets from hundreds to thousands of kilometers away from the radar station. On HF they are very common and can be easily heard as continuous or bursty buzzing sounds.

Over on his blog Daniel Estevez writes how he was inspired by Balint Seebers GRCon16 talk to perform his own investigations into HF OTH radar. Daniel first analyzed a recorded IQ signal of a presumed Russian radar in Audacity, and noticed that it consisted of 15 kHz wide pulses repeated at 50 Hz intervals. He then used GNU Radio and the Quadrature Demod block to FM demodulate the pulse and see how the frequency changes over time. From this he was able to determine the original transmitted radar pulse characteristics

Next he performs pulse compression, which is essentially a cross correlation of the received pulse and transmitted pulse which was determined from the characteristics found earlier. The signal being received at Daniels location is distorted, because it will arrive from multiple paths, since the signal will bounce of multiple layers of the ionosphere. With this pulse compression technique Daniel is able to determine the time of flight for the different multi-path components of the received pulse. By graphing all the results over time he was able to obtain this image illustrating relative propagation distance over time.

Check out Daniels post for the full details and his code.

Ionosphere Propagation Graph
Ionosphere Propagation Graph

30% Off Outernet L-Band RTL-SDR DIY Kits – $70 for RTL-SDR, LNA, Antenna, CHIP and Battery

Outernet is an L-band satellite service that aims to be a “library in the sky”. They are constantly transmitting data such as up to date news, weather updates, Wikipedia pages, books, ISS APRS repeats and much more. Their DIY receiver kit consists of a lithium battery pack, L-band patch satellite antenna, LNA with built in filter, C.H.I.P mini Linux computer and an RTL-SDR E4000 or V3.

The DIY kit is normally priced at $99 USD, but right now they are running a 30% off Christmas promotion, bringing the price down to $69.30 USD. If you don’t need the battery pack, the sale price is then only $55.30 USD. This seems like a very good deal as normally just the patch antenna and Outernet LNA would be almost $50 USD in total.

To get the discount you must purchase directly from their store and use the coupon 30OFF. The promotion ends 31 December 2016 at 11:59 PM CST so get in quick.

The Outernet items you get for $70 USD.
The Outernet items you get for $70 USD.

A Cooking Pot L-Band Antenna

Over on YouTube Adam 9A4QV has uploaded a video showing us his home made cooking pot L-band antenna. The antenna consists of a large aluminum cooking pot which acts as a reflector and a cross-dipole inside the pot acting as the antenna.

The antenna is placed at a height of exactly 1/4 wavelength from the base of the pot, and the cross dipole wire lengths are 0.52 and 0.42 wavelengths long. They are different wavelengths as this achieves circular polarization. Adam writes that the gain should be about 4 – 5 dB’s better than a patch antenna.

The first video shows the performance of the antenna in SDR# when receiving the Outernet and Inmarsat/Alphasat L-band satellite signals indoors. Together with an LNA4ALL and RTL-SDR, Adam gets about 8 dB on the Outernet signal and 24 dB on AERO.

Cooking pot L band antenna

L band cooking pot antenna

Airspy Mini Christmas Sale – $80 USD

The Airspy Mini is a software defined radio with a tuning range of 24 MHz to 1800 MHz, 12-bit ADC and up to 6 MHz of bandwidth. It usually costs $99 USD and is the younger brother of the $149 USD Airspy R2.

Currently the manufacturer iTead is running a Christmas sale on the Airspy Mini. The sale price is $80 USD, which is a 19% saving. To get the sale price you need to click on the “Get coupon code here” link and then share the promotion to your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account.

Update: They have given us a special blog coupon code “AS-RTLSDR-BLOG“. Just use this code at the checkout and it will apply the discount without the need to share. Edit: The blog coupon appears to have stopped working, an alternative one that is still working is “as3“.

The sale lasts from December 20, 2016 – January 3, 2017.

If you want to see more about the Airspy Mini then see our review here. Our other previous review comparing the Airspy R2 against the SDRplay RSP and HackRF may also be of interest as the Mini’s performance is very similar to the R2.

The Airspy Mini iTead Christmas Sale
The Airspy Mini iTead Christmas Sale