Tagged: ham it up

Nooelec Ham It Up Upconverter Metal Case Now For Sale

Nooelec, manufacturer of the popular Ham-It-Up upconverter has now begun selling metal enclosures for the upconverter. The Ham-It-Up is an upconverter which allows the RTL-SDR to receive HF (0-30 MHz) signals.

  • High-quality custom aluminum enclosure for Ham It Up v1.1 & v1.2.
  • Metal case helps to protect PCB from stray EMI, improving sensitivity.
  • Includes all required hardware to mount your PCB!
  • Ample room inside the case to make modifications and even include a dongle inside the case if you are so inclined.
NooElec Ham-It-Up Upconverter Case
NooElec Ham-It-Up Upconverter Case

 

RTL-SDR + Upconverter vs. Portable Shortwave Receiver

Akos from the SDR for Mariners blog has put together an article doing a comparison between the RTL-SDR + ham-it-up upconverter and a Grunding G8 Traveler II Digital conventional portable hardware shortwave radio.

His results show that the RTL-SDR and portable receiver are comparable in terms of performance, with a slight edge to the RTL-SDR. He adds that software tweaks available in SDR# can improve the voice quality for the RTL-SDR. However his final recommendation for general shortwave listening is that the portable is still the better option due to it’s ease of use.

RTL-SDR + Upconverter vs. Portable Shortwave Radio
RTL-SDR + Upconverter vs. Portable Shortwave Radio

Upconverter Comparison: Nooelec Ham it Up vs SDR Up 100

A few weeks ago Akos from the SDR for Mariners blog did a review of the SDR Up 100 Upconverter, and he promised to compare it with the Nooelec Ham-it-up Upconverter when it arrived. He has now done the comparison, and written about it on his blog.

For each test he used a gain of 0dB and the same 20 foot random wire antenna. Interestingly, his results show that the SDR Up 100 significantly outperforms the Ham-it-up upconverter. We believe that this may be as the SDR Up 100 has an LNA built into it whereas the Ham it up does not.

Update: Akos has now included comparisons with various RTL gain settings.

upconverterCompare
SDR Up 100 vs Ham It Up
Nooelec vs Up 100 comparison
Comparison Images

HackRF Now for Sale

HackRF is now for sale on Kickstarter, and it has already reached it’s $80,000 USD goal in less than half a day. If you didn’t already know, HackRF is an open source Software Defined Radio that can receive and transmit between 30 MHz and 6 GHz. HackRF has a 20 MHz bandwidth which when compared to the RTL-SDRs 3.2 MHz maximum is a lot.

There have already been 500 HackRF beta units sent out so the hardware should be fairly stable by now.

The basic package which includes a fully assembled HackRF board and enclosure is selling for $275. For $315 you can get a HackRF, enclosure and a Ham-It-Up upconverter as well, which is commonly also used with the RTL-SDR and will allow you to receive the HF bands between 0 – 30 MHz.

HackRF Jawbreaker Board with Enclosure

If you are interested in some videos, here is a video showing the HackRF transmitting wideband FM using GNURadio.

Here, showing 20 MHz of the GSM band

HackRF smoke testing: GSM tower

Here, 20 MHz of the broadcast FM band

HackRF smoke testing: Full FM broadcast band