ON4MJ's Home Page

Hit-A-STAR Receiver

Introduction

The goal of this site is to report my progress in building the Pic-A-STAR transceiver, the description of which is currently published as a serie of articles in RadCom, the magazine of the Radio Society of Great Britain. This transceiver design was (or should I say 'is constantly'?) developped by Peter Rhodes, G3XJP.

Pic-A-STAR is a "Software Transmitter And Receiver". At the core, it is a converter to a second IF of 15kHz (no typo!), which is fed to a DSP processor, which implements filters and detection. But Pic-A-STAR is now much more than that. The recent RadCom articles featured an H-Mode mixer, and a band-pass filter. And Peter has perhaps one or two more bunnies in his hat.

RadCom is normally only available to RSGB members. But the past articles are available from the file section of the Yahoo! group devoted to STAR discussions.
The serie started in August 2002 and is still going on !

Note that you will probably need the article serie about Pic'n Mix (a previous design of Peter, on which STAR builds). The text of these articles is also available from the Pic-A-Star Yahoo! group, but they do not contain the PCB artwork. Alternatively, you can buy the RadCom 1999 CD-ROM archive (available from the RSGB), or you can borrow the relevant issues of RadCom from your society library if such a service is available. This is possible for UBA members (cf. CQ-QSO).
The site of G6AK provides PCBs to build it, including improved versions, like the Pic Adapter needed by Pic-A-Star already included on the main board.

Imaginary FAQs

Why "Hit"-A-STAR ?

Your title says "receiver" !

If STAR stands for 'Software Transmitter And Receiver', shouldn't yours be an 'SR' ?

I'd like to contact you, but can't find your email anywhere...

Where everything happens

STARs

Amateur Software Transceivers

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"QRN sur Bretzelburg"
This site is dedicated to André Franquin, SK