SDR-1000 / Flex-5000A
Towards the end of 2006, I was enjoying HAM radio, operating on a variety of different modes – voice, cw and data, and also using all bands except 160m where I still had noise problems. My only issue was the IC7000. Its a great radio, but its not a base radio.... I began to look at upgrading to a base radio. Radios considered were the Icom Pro III, the Icom 7400. When I compared these radios to others, the Ten Tec Orion came up as the best base radio and had considerably better receive characteristics. This radio was beyond my budget and I looked again. In September I discovered the Softrock SDR radio kit and out of curiosity I bought and built one. Wow! I couldn't believe that its receive on 40 & 80m was better than my IC7000, when doing side by side comparisons, the noise issues disappeared and the flexibility of getting rid of strong adjacent signals was amazing. In November 2008 I received the new Softrock SDR v9.0 kit, which I am currently in the process of building.
This little board belittled my IC7000!
The following month I was the proud owner of a SDR-1000 100watt radio. I am still in the process of learning all its capabilities, but so far, it has performed exceeding all expectations. You are not paying for an expensive front panel & lcd with loads of buttons and dials. My Softrock 40/80m assembled receiver was immediately snapped up by another club member who is also fascinated by the SDR technology. Time has moved on and a Flex-5000A now filled the space.
Quite a plain box, isn't it?
Nice blue light!!
You can read about some of the things I've learned by following these links;
Overview of Flex-5000A station set-up
Desktop computer specification
Overview of SDR1000 station set-up
Setting up the HamAlyzer & VAC programs
You can just see the Flex-5000A under my desk on the right
Without question, this is a high-tech station and one that gives me many hours of fun. I would take a moment to pause though, and consider the other as important half of the station - the antenna! As you may have already read when browsing this site, considerable work has gone into achieving efficient and effective antennas from my small backyard. I am currently using a multi-band dipole - which is performing very well on 80m and above, a few pictures of my antennas maybe viewed by following this link.