--- Robert & Linda McGraw K4TAX <RMcGraw@Blomand.Net>
wrote:
> FYI - My radio with a fancy color display won't hear
> the same signals out of
> the 144 MHz or 432 MHz transverters that the Omni
> VI+ will hear and it has
> only a numeric display.
This is one side of the trade off that I now face when
using a bunch of Pegasus radios and N4PY software for
my VHF/UHF transverters. The software displays let me
"see" activity that I'd wouldn't otherwise find by
just VFO knob twirling or scanning alone. In VHF
contests I can be calling CQ on a "run" frequency and
be making Q's like any other plain radio can, but with
the spectrum sweep I can see when someone new pops up
on some other frequency up or down the band (or other
3 bands) and get to that frequency and work them
without hardly missing a beat on my run frequency. And
I don't have to use a knob to tune to them either,
just click on the spike and go. Absolutely killer for
keeping tabs on the rover stations whereabouts without
having to wait/look for them repeatedly.
Unfortunately the Pegasus is not a top of the line RF
performing radio. I bump into its RF performance
limitations regularly (specifically synthesizer phase
noise, 3rd order IP, and DBR). It does however do an
excellent job for about 85-90% of the VHF/UHF contest
Q's that I do make. It's for those last 10-15% of the
Q's that I'd like the RF/RX performance of the Orion
for. But its economics are hard to justify for what
I'm doing here, the cost of all 6 Pegs combined (most
bought used) was only about $1000 more than a new
Orion would be. But the 6 Pegs give me both full time
RX AND sweep on 50 & 144MHz and sweep or RX on 222 &
432Mhz (so I can be receiving/watching on all 4 bands
simultaneously). An Orion would only give me a
fraction of the multiple/simultaneous band
listening/watching capability that I now have.
And radios like the FT1000's et al. are even more
limiting, no spectrum capability at all, or good PC
control (therefore are pretty much worthless for what
I'm doing) and the IC-756Pro's come up totally short
for PC control as well. And the FT8x7's and TS-2000s
are actually quite pricey when dedicated to single
band use, and have little or no PC control (or
software availability) plus are mediocre to poor RF
performers as well, and no spectrum sweep capability
of any kind. And with 4 each of any of these various
JA built radios I still couldn't do what I want to be
doing, and am now already doing with a half dozen Pegs
with transverters and a decent Win2K PC with 3
monitors and 10 Comm ports driving the whole lot.
Now if the Flex-Radio SDR1000 proves to be a genuinely
good RF performer and has some good software developed
for it I could build PC based SDR radios for
transverter IF duties for about $1000 each. There
would be $500 in SDR1000 boards and another $500 or so
in ~2.5GHZ PC's to dedicate to each of them. So I'd
end up at about the same total $ as I now have
invested and have even more functionality (and
hopefully as good or better RF performance) than
anything else out there on the market today. Now only
if the software "glue" was available today to make
them play the way I'd like them to...
Duane
N9DG
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