SOFTROCK

[KL7OF]

I am looking at the softrock site and I see that the frequency coverage of the softrock receivers for 160, 80, and 20 meters is limited to the lower portions of the band....Not real good for a phone operator that wants to operate at 14286....3885....and.......1945....can these be modified?......am I missing something?

[WA1GFZ]

All you need to do is change the crystal. The tuning BW is based on the sound card sample rate. or just buy one for your IF and hang it off the RX.

[KF1Z]

I used one softrock to cover 160 through 40 meters...

Just switch bandpass filters, and use a DDS VFO (or analog)  instead of a crystal...

Works fine and dandy.


But the newest versions are much better...  $52.00


""The v9.0 Lite+USB Xtall kit provides a ham band SDR receiver with frequency coverage of all HF ham bands in four manual plug in BPF modules. The band coverage is by used of a 160m BPF, an 80m/40m BPF, a 30m/20m/17m BPF and a 15m/12m/10m BPF. Center frequencies are set via the USB connection to the v9.0 Lite+USB Xtall circuit board. Kit includes a CMOS Si570. ""

[WA1GFZ]

Wow thay have come a long way. I bet the RX works just as well as a flex SMUG radio

[KF1Z]

They work ok for 40 meters and below.... good antenna a must.

Above that... you really need a preamp ... (flex at least has that)

It is after all a direct-conversion RX.

You can build a transciever that way too... there is a 80/40 meter softrock transciever kit... same deal, add a vfo instead of xtal, and you have full band coverage of 40 and 80 meters.   One watt out poot.
I still have one of those laying in a drawer here. I think they were around $35.

Problem is... hardly ANY of the softrock stuff is even available to purchase!
When you go to the order site  kb9yig.com  most of the items say "check back later"...

[K9ACT]

I am looking at the softrock site and I see that the frequency coverage of the softrock receivers for 160, 80, and 20 meters is limited to the lower portions of the band....Not real good for a phone operator that wants to operate at 14286....3885....and.......1945....can these be modified?......am I missing something?

Yes.  You are looking at old, obsolete xtal controlled stuff.

You want Lite v.9.  Tunes 160 through 20 and some options for 10 and 6.

If you want to use it with an existing receiver, you want Lite with IF.  Just as old but not obsolete.

js

[KF1Z]

Tony has dropped the IF version off the order list.
But, still has the 160, 80 and 40 meter Lite 6.2 on there, all 4 of them are the exact same rx exept for BPF and crystal values.

I think one of the newer kits is basically general coverrage... but one of the v9 kits is NOT, you have only one center frequency for each ham band that is programmed on a PIC...
So still very limited in frequency range.

[K1JJ]

Bruce,

I have a SoftRock  SV 6.2 Lite board.    Did I buy it used from you a few years ago, or was that someone else?

Anyway, I'm looking to use it only as a spectrum analyzer using the 455 kc I.F. from my FT-102.   I wonder if you could help me with a few questions?


The xtal in it says EGS2315R.   My laptop computer is a Dell D-600 Pentium - an older unit, but works OK.  It has just a mic input.  Do I need a special sound card just to do the spec analyzer?   Is this xtal for just one band? I was hoping to cover 75M as a minimum.



Thanks.

T

[KF1Z]

Tom.
Could have been mine...

The laptop is fine...

The crystal gives you one small slice of spectrum.. usually only 48kc worth, depending on your soundcard...

if you get a "high end" soundcard.. (192khz sample rate) that's how much bandwidth you can "see" at once.


Put 12 volts to the softrock, and measure the crytal osc freq... it will be running at either 4 or 8 times the RX center freq, depending on the position of the jumper on the board.

[WA1GFZ]

Tom, I have a couple 6.2s. I'll have to look at the schematic to see which crystal you will need. I use a divide by 8 in my homebrew with a color burst crystal to monitor about 16 khz bw. Your lap top needs to have a stereo input to the sound card. It will work single channel but there will be birdies.  I only have ver 6.0 schematic on this machine that looks like it would work with a color burst crystal.  
There is a jumper on the board that selects the division ratio I was going to change my crystal to one slightly higher to get wider BW by moving the CF further away.  You want the oscillator frequency 8 or 10 khz away from 455 KHz. I think the options are divide by 4 or divide by 8 so 465 KHz times 4 or 8. I think the color burst comes in at low side conversion around 446 khz.

[K9ACT]

I could be wrong on this but I think there is no advantage using a stereo sound card with the IF SoftRock.

There is a large chunk of unusable area in the very center of the band pass.  This of course is where you would want to put the center of your IF but then you can't hear anything there.

This means that you can only really use one side of your IF passband and push this off the center and use the rest of one side for your area of interest.  A 96 kc sound card serves no purpose because you don't have anything close to that getting through the IF, let alone half of it.

I used a Dell laptop with onboard mono card with an S40B for two years and it was the best receiver I ever owned.  I eventually bought an outboard sound card but it really made no difference until I made the V9 receiver and there it is a must.

Jack



 

[KF1Z]

There shouldn't be a "...large chunk of unusable area in the very center of the band pass.."

If you have a large spike there, with a lot of garbage around it... you have a ground-loop problem...

A little care of cabling, and isolation, and the entire spectrum should be fairly  clean...

(There may be a very small, 3 to maybe 5 khz area that the noise floor is too high to use...)

[K9ACT]

There shouldn't be a "...large chunk of unusable area in the very center of the band pass.."

If you have a large spike there, with a lot of garbage around it... you have a ground-loop problem...

A little care of cabling, and isolation, and the entire spectrum should be fairly  clean...

(There may be a very small, 3 to maybe 5 khz area that the noise floor is too high to use...)

I spent 2 years trying to get rid of it in all the ways you mentioned and gave it up as the nature of the beast.

However,  5 khz is a "large chunk" out of the middle.  It doesn't matter what the magnitude of the spike is if signals can not be copied there.

js

[KL7OF]

It looks like SOFT ROCK is a bust ...All the kits are" check back later" 

[K9ACT]

It looks like SOFT ROCK is a bust ...All the kits are" check back later" 

That is just the strange way he does business.  For some reason, he does not want to take orders  unless the stuff is ready to ship.

How he determines what and how much to build next is a mystery and of course the reason he has these "check back" delivery schedules.

It's a pain in the butt for the customer but it's his business. 

Sooner or later, he will take orders and hopefully have built enough to work yours in.

js

[KL7OF]

Well he's lost me....Too much mystery

[K1JJ]

Hmmm.... I just checked the manual and see that the wideband I.F #2 receiver output on the FT-102 is 8.2 MHZ, not 455kc.   That's why I probably stopped the project last time.  The 8.2mhz output looks good into a regular scope.

Will 8.2 mhz still work with the board with the right xtal?   My other rig, the FT-1000D uses the same RX I.F.

I do have a homebrew 11 tube RX with a 455kc IF and an SP-600, (455 I.F.?)  but was hoping to use the riceboxes.

T

[WD8BIL]

Yes Tom, I have the v6.2 running off the Drake R4a at 5.645 Mhz.
You'll need to do some work on the input circuit but it is possible,

[KF1Z]

Yes, change the crystal  and rewind the BPF, change caps...

I'll email you the details in a bit.....

 

[WA1GFZ]

I just saw a message from Tony today. He is pushing 70 and doing the best he can to fill orders.
Tom,
The softrock will work fine hanging off your first IF. Tony actually sold kits a while ago to support that. I can help you if the input filter is wrong. Also I have a better transformer design. The sensitivity of a softrock is the noise floor of your sound card plus a couple dB for loss in the tayloe. I would pick off your signal just ahead of the second mixer after the roofing filter(s) I bet if you look back about a year in softrock posts there are a bunch on the FT1000. You want to be slightly off the IF frequency so the noise at zero is shifted away from the IF CF. Flex runs 11 KHz offset.
All you unhappy customers. A few years ago I wanted to homebrew an SDR interface with a friend in CA. We built our own boards and I did the design. I think the cost to build two units was around $200. The extra cost was the best op amp we could get and DIN connectors to plug into an RA6830. So $15 is a bargin.

[KF1Z]

Please see the component changes from the 40m Lite II to the 8.215 MHz application.  You may be able to relate the values to the v6.2 Lite situation.

8.215 MHz SoftRock Lite II for K3 IF application
SoftRock operated with crystal frequency divided by 4. The SoftRock center frequency will be
about 8.191 MHz and when used with a soundcard that can sample at 96 kHz will give IF band
coverage from 8.143 MHz to 8.239 MHz where the K3 IF center is 8.215 MHz.
C10 100pF
C11 not used
L1 34T of #30 on a T25-2 core (4.0 uH)
T1 9T of #30 on primary and 5T of #30 in each of the two secondary
windings "bifilar" over the top of the primary on a T25-2 core (0.25 uH on primary)
C3 = 100 pF
C4 = 1500 pF
Crystal X1 is 32.768 MHz

73,
Tony Parks
kb9yig@gmail.com
http://www.kb9yig.com


 

[K1JJ]

Thanks for the info Bruce.

So basically, I need to make the changes above to get it to work with an 8.2 mhz IF.  And then make the changes you sent to get it to work on ONE band, like 80M, one band at a time, right? (Assuming it is not already on 80M)

If I use the FT-1000D as an exciter for an amplifier and also as the I.F. driving the softrock card, will I be able to see the RF signal of the power amplifier when transmitting?  Or should I use a separate receiver, like from the FT-102 dedicated to simply monitoring the spectrum during RX and when I transmit into an antenna?


T

[KF1Z]

Just think of your IF  as a "band".

It is a stand alone RX for one band at a time ("stock", no mods)

If you wanted to be able to use it as a stand-alone rx, connected to the antenna, AND be able to use it as an IF rx... I'd suggest 2 seperate units, one for each purpose, though with switching crytals and inpoot filters, it could do both.

But, since you have a couple riceboxes that are all hf bands...
Just set the softrock up for the 8.215mhz IF, and use it that way....
You have full HF coverage that way, with the benifit of the filtering and pre-amps in the ricebox.

I'll let you know what crystals I have tomorow.


And yes... I'm 95% sure you'll see your transmit signal through the same IF strip.

[K1JJ]

Bruce,

OK, I see.  The Softrock accepts the permanant 8.215 IF freq and the ricebox can tune anywhere it wants. That's great.

I will probably use the FT-102/SoftRock  both as a DEDICATED spec analyzer to check my own signal at the 1500w level and also as a RX to see others' signals - and use the FT-1000D as the main operating rig.  I will need an antenna relay to disconnect the FT-102 receiver input during transmitting of the FT-1000D/linear.

Tnx for checking on the xtals.

T

[WA1GFZ]

Tom,
The input wants to see 50 ohms for the mixer to work properly. I think it would be a good idea to load the input. Then connect input through a series resistor around say 1 k to isolate the load of the softrock from dragging down the RX IF. Also I would AC couple it to the radio with a .01uf. The Softrock may cause a DC short through the transformer primary. You don't really need an input filter since it is after the roofing filter. I used a 6 db resistive pad on mine.
The S meter function will not work properly because the  receiver has an AGC. It is possible to calibrate it but the range will be limited to the dynamic range of the first IF and you will need to leave in in manual AGC mode. You want a signal level well above the noise floor but not so strong that it saturates the sound card. You can play with the 1 k series resistor to dial it in. A single channel input will not demodulate as well as a stereo input. You should have the AGC in manual mode to check IMD. Even if the S meter isn't tracking properly a dB is still a dB making it useful as a tool.
You will have to play with the software a bit to get it where you want it.
There was a resistor change around to the oscillator bias hopefully Bruce can find it
or it is installed in your board. The oscillator frequency is getting up there and it could have a problem driving the logic