The AM Forum

I am experimenting with a KiwiSDR clone that has coverage up to 62 MHz. I am running it on the 80-10m OCF antenna (same as my other Kiwi receivers) but it does fairly well receiving on 6m. It receives AM/FM/CW/SSB so all modes work.


http://sigmasdr.ddns.net:8077


Again, it is experimental and may not always be available. I'd appreciate any feedback on how well it receives in its current state and antenna. Feel free to fire up and see if it will hear your station.


- Rob, N1NTE

it wants a password...

Ed

Ditto

Sorry about that. It is now open access.

- Rob

  Rob is this a Raspsdr or a Flydog version or something else?  I am hosting a Flydog one that works well after some engineering and cooling modifications. Unfortunately it wont decode FSK at all. Seems to do WSPR fine, but no go on FSK or Navtex.


Steve

KB1VWC

It is a FlyDog. They stopped producing them because of pressure from the Chinese Govt. I did do the mod on it to improve the higher frequency sensitivity. I haven't tried any of those modes yet.

I wanted to get something up for 30-54 MHz as I like VHF-Lo band listening and 6 meters. It seems to do OK in that range despite the antenna not being optimal and also horizontal.

    I noticed yours is running very cool.  I had to add a heatsink to the LTC2208 and changed the fan as the supplied one pretty much seized up after two weeks.   I activated the onboard WI-FI, but couldn't get a decent signal through the metal case after I had improved the grounding of the boards to the case (makes sense). I have it running on a USB wi-fi stick.  It seems to work just fine other than those modes that it won't decode. Interesting though if you output the tones to a secondary decoding application, it works just fine. Is the mod for high frequency cutting the 0-30mhz portion lo-pass filter on the secondary port out the circuit? So disable the 0-30mhz port? or something else?

Steve

I'm just using the small fan that came with the case. I have on my long To Do list to use some larger fans to blow across all the Kiwis. I have a plan to build an enclosure to house all of them to clean things up a bit.


Must be a problem porting those extensions over to RPi.


That was all I did. Fortunately, I don't drink coffee so my hand was steady enough to do that mod. Those parts are small and very close together. :)

"Fortunately, I don't drink coffee so my hand was steady enough to do that mod. Those parts are small and very close together."
No Kidding..Microscope required!
Thanks for the info Rob. I think mine was very early in production. You definitely needed a heatsink on the A/D which mine didn't come with.

Steve

KB1VWC

Rob,
how does one get the SDR to go beyond 32MHz?  I seem to hit the wall there and can't go higher.

The KiwiSDR's upper range is 32 MHz. The FlyDogSDR, which is a Rasperry Pi based "clone" of the KiwiSDR, has an option to set the upper limit to 62 MHz.

- Rob