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Re: [TenTec] Pegasus / Softrock 5

To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Pegasus / Softrock 5
From: "Mark Erbaugh" <mark@microenh.com>
Reply-to: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:37:20 -0500
List-post: <mailto:tentec@contesting.com>
Duane,

Thanks for the reply.  I went back and reviewed your original posting.

http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/TenTec/2004-12/msg00116.html

In the case of the Pegasus and its design similar siblings I
often thought that the 45 MHz IF is the best place to apply
this idea. Unfortunately in the case of the QSD that high of
a frequency is a bit of a challenge to get to. Although I
think decent results could also be had by applying the QSD to
the 455 kHz IF of the Pegasus instead. The other limitation
of using a radio like the Pegasus or its sibs for such work
is that the 45 MHz IF roofing filter will limit any
QSD/external DSP IF to ~15 kHz of bandwidth. To me that is
too restrictive given the increasingly common use of 96 kHz
bandwidth in the SDR radio programs like Rocky, PowerSDR, and
Winrad. I suppose if you only want a narrow bandwidth IF then
that is not an issue (that's exactly what I had with the CII
experiments I did). I suppose with some creative design you
could actually do both bandwidths, narrow for optimal DR
performance and wide for panadapter purposes.

I hadn't really looked at the Pegasus mixing scheme, which kind of messes up what I was thinking about. I was really thinking about using some frequency in the Pegasus (I forgot about the 45 MHz) as the VFO for the QSD. That would require a frequency near the intended tuning range, which probably doesn't exist in the Pegasus.


Also in the case of the Pegasus and its sibs the prospect of
TX with a QSE (or any other baseband to RF mixer scheme) may
be a bit challenging to implement, not likely to be a
"restorable" mod to make. For some reason I can't ever bring
myself to making mods of this level to a radio that can't be
undone.

I figured I'd just use the Pegasus' transmitter.


And finally I do know that there are some that are taking the
12 kHz IF out of the RX 320(D) and feeding it directly into
Winrad. This works because Winrad does not need I/Q inputs to
work. This was discussed within this last week on the RX 320
group on Yahoo.

I have modified both my Pegasus and my RX320 to bring out the 12 kHz IF and have decoded that with a computer, but I was thinking that a QSD mixer might work better, plus you would be able to get twice the bandwidth if you have both I and Q - though I hadn't thought about the roofing filter.

73,
Mark




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