[Elecraft] Panadapters Summary of comments

[Bill OMara]

Thanks everyone foe all the comments and suggestion.  I was surprised to see
the limited comments toward the SDRs like; Funcube PRO Plus, SDR Play,
Softrock and others and more comments toward the LP-Pan2 than expected with
a good sound card of course.  After some more research I'll pick a path and
get started on my upgrades.

 

73 Bill  W4RM

 

Panadapter  Re-cap of provided comments

 

*         The P3 is turnkey, plug and play as they say costs more, plug in
an use today

 

*         Softrock  based panadapter has worked great here on my K3 for many
years.

 

*         LPPAN for several years with no problems. I was using NaP3, but
with the uncertain future of its support, I have switched over to Win4K3.
Configuration for the K3 and LPPAN is a bit simpler than with NaP3.

 

*         The LP-Pan2 or good SDR route simply from a cost perspective, If
you want you can upgrade the sound system relatively inexpensively to an
outboard USB solution like  ASUS Xonar U7 or the Steinberg UR22 for more
bandwidth, 192KHz

 

*         The LP-Pan - struggled with it for year then realized my sound
card was junk, $80 for U5 card after getting said card, wanted another for
RTTY!!   

 

*         Software setup:

LP-Bridge connects to K3s serial port & provides multiple virtual serial
ports

NaP3 for wide-band view, connects to U5 audio & K3s via LP-Bridge CW
Skimmer, connects to U5 audio & K3s via LP-Bridge Either WriteLog or N1MM+
for logging, connects to K3s via LP-Bridge Set CW Skimmer to send spots to
Telenet/localhost Connect logging software spots/band map to localhost

This provides point & click capability for your logging program, and the
main advantage is that no spots appear on the bandmap unless you are
actually hearing them.

 

*         You should check out Win4K3Suite.  It is the only software
panadapter that offers true QSY's regardless of mode, bandwidth shift etc.
Unlike the LPBridge software, Win4K3 operates trouble free.

o   Here's a link to the video.

o   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htVlc9x0IoU

o   It supports the P3/SVGA with a video capture board ($$$), LPPAN with a
sound card($$) and SDRPlay ($).

 

*         I use 2 k3's and a kx3 all with an lp pan, a softrock (equivalent
to lp pan with a bit of work) and direct I/Q from the kx3.  I use cwskimmer
for cw and rtty contests.  I use a 20 inch monitor in portrait orientation
to show about 22 khz of spectrum.  Using synergy which allows sharing the
keyboard and mouse I can get to the second PC running the kx3 pretty
seamlessly. 

o   This is for so3r. I am limited to 2 cwskimmers per PC due to its
limitation.