Topband: Budget high-performance topband transceiver

[Steve Ireland]

G’day 

I’ve enjoyed the recent discussions about the best cost-effective transceiver for use on 160m. Thought there were a couple of other ideas to throw into the pot on this topic.

For those on a serious budget, the Icom IC-751A and the Kenwood TS-830S are still excellent performers on 160m for $500 or less – and can be found with 500Hz filters in two IFs if you are lucky.  The IC-751A is also a great receiver for the 630m band and DX listening to NDBs. 

For those topbanders like Barry N1EU who are interested in SDR, the latest version of the PowerSDR/OpenHPSDR software and its associated firmware places the coding involved with CW generation inside the main FPGA associated with the HPSDR/Hermes/ANAN radio.  The radio’s sidetone is generated completely in the FPGA and is not sent to PowerSDR, so there should be zero latency between a key press and the radio’s sidetone appearing.

I haven’t tried this software on my HPSDR yet, but am looking forward to doing so, as this improvement apparently removes the last hurdle for a SDR transceiver to be a truly attractive alternative to the K3 etc for a serious CW DX/contest operator.

Vy 73

Steve, VK6VZ

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com