Russ & The Group,
The W1GHZ mini-transverter is impressive, and the price is certainly right too.
But I’d love to see assembled versions offered. If I had the time to build a
kit, then I wouldn’t need to spend all my time on the night before a contest
rushing around like a crazy man. I have two kits on my bench now that could
probably be assembled in two or three evenings of serious effort, but they’ve
been completed piece meal an hour or so at a time..and it’s taken months. Many
of us prefer a plug and play solution.
Working just two hours with the Flex 1500 as the IF rig for my transverters was
all it took to convince me that SDR really is the wave of the future for VHF
Contesters. The ability to see stations that are off the calling frequency also
has the added advantage of encouraging people to move away from these channels
without having to worry about what you might be missing. Also, if someone is
off frequency on a microwave band, it really cuts down on the time required to
“find them”.
If you’re operating with transverters and haven’t tried this yet, I highly
recommend it. I think that the Flex gang is planning to come to the SE VHF
Convention in Huntsville. Maybe they could arrange to set up a couple of 10Ghz
rigs using the Flex 1500 as the IF? I think you’d make a believer out of a lot
of people in a hurry. Married to the W1GHZ mini-transverters, you’d have a
powerful system for driving microwave gear.
I’ve resisted the thought of buying and using transverters for 144 and 432
since I have a “perfectly good Icom IC-910H” but after this contest experience,
I may take the plunge and purchase transverters for the lower bands too. Using
the SDR visual interface is almost a completely new experience. And during 6
Meter band openings, wow!
Last June we had a nice 2 Meter e-skip opening, and stations spread out across
about 40khz of the band on either side of 144.200. While I worked four new
grids that day, I later learned that I had missed at least two more by having
to tune so much, looking for other stations and then bouncing back to the
calling frequency to be sure that I didn’t miss any newcomers. Using the SDR, I
could have done all that visually, and likely would have picked up those
additional two grids.
There are some bugs left to be worked out of the software as it applies to
transverters, but the basic concept of “SDR vs. traditional radio” is no
contest at all. Those who are serious about their point totals, or just need to
take every advantage that they can get (like those with serious limitations in
antennas) will love having this “ringer” on the team. I’ve got no connection to
the company, just a very satisfied user.
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF
EM63nf
121 Mayfair Park
Maylene, AL 35114
6M VUCC #1712
Grid Bandit #222
Check out W1GHZ's small transverter for the Flex-1500:
http://www.w1ghz.org/small_proj/small_proj.htm
It's low power, though, so if you have a microwave transverter with high drive
requirements then you'd have to modify it.
-Russ KB8U
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|