[NLRS] question of transverters vs radios

[Duane - N9DG]

To large extent you have already answered your own question.
It really does come down long term vs. short term. So then
the question becomes "when does the long term begin"?

In my case "the long term" transition to all transverters
began ~1999 when I bought a DEMI transverter to get on 222. I
coupled it to a Ten Tec 580 Delta and was immediately blown
away by the clarity of the RX signals vs. the Icom IC-820H's
(2 & .7M) and 706 MKII (6M) I was running on the other bands
at the time. About that same time I picked up my first Ten
Tec Pegasus because I was fascinated by computer driven
radios, my early experiences with it exceeded my expectations
and the then rapidly evolving N4PY software really made the
spectrum sweep concept play. I then picked up a 2M DEMI
transverter and in short order I had it coupled to the
Pegasus. Needless to say I was immediately convinced of the
incredible power and flexibility of point and click tuning
and spectrum display concepts. I now find that using VFO's
and digital frequency displays only is incredibly
frustrating, it's like driving while wearing blinders.

I was now bit hard, the 6 & .7M transverters soon followed
along with additional Pegasus radios (all bought used). For 6
& 2 I slaved two Pegasus radios together under N4PY software
so I could have continuous spectrum sweep and a dedicated
RX/TX radio. A second Pegasus was required over a RX320 due
to serial port speed; the RX320's 1200-baud port just isn't
up to the task of sweeping 150kHz in 4-5 seconds like the
Pegasus can. I quickly discovered that multiple sessions of
N4PY software could run on one PC so that in turn drove a
need to add monitors to display it all along with WriteLog. I
now have 3 monitors on one PC, 2 for the 4 N4PY software
sessions and one for WriteLog. All the tuning of the Pegasus
radios is done by point-click and/or click-drag operations
with a mouse in the spectrum sweep windows.

The final thing that I have done to improve the whole system
is to add some additional radios as sub RX's. For these I
picked up some Ten Tec Corsairs. They can be bought for
$300-400 and are ranked pretty high on the Sherwood
Engineering's ranking chart for close spaced dynamic range
and low phase noise. It's kinda like the HF guys buying and
modifying Drake R-4C's for their really tough RX needs. I
felt that the Corsairs could be used "as is" without
modification for sub RX duties and are a bit more modern than
the R-4C's plus have digital readouts. Since these are sub
RX's I wasn't concerned about fast tuning since they tend to
be parked more whereas the Pegs are being tuned around a lot
while chasing the spikes I see. I feed the RX IF out of the
transverters to the multiple radios through Mini Circuits
power dividers in the RX IF line. The Corsairs are muted
simply by putting them into TX (with their TX drive all the
way down - they stay in SSB mode only) when TX-ing on the
main Pegasus. I just put a low power dummy load on the main
antenna port and feed the IF into the aux. RX antenna port on
the Corsairs. The second Pegasus is easily muted by a clever
connection of the QSK CW keying loops between the two of
them. Works slick.

Early on I decided to standardize on few key transverter
configuration parameters. Things like split RX/TX IF's, PTT's
all being closures to ground, all TX IF levels in the ~100mW
range etc. This standardization allows for easy swapping of
gear without having to be concerned that they may be keyed or
fed differently. So whenever I bought a used transverter that
was configured differently I would first reconfigure it to my
standards before putting it on line. Also keeping all the
radios themselves nearly identical keeps the level of cockpit
confusion to a minimum.

The reason I'm describing all of this is to illustrate why
transverters are probably a better long term and more
open-ended solution. If I had stuck to the typical all mode
radio approach I would not have any of point and click tuning
or spectrum sweeps. Also if I had bought current model all
band all mode radios I would have almost as much money tied
up in it all as I now do to get the same 4 band simultaneous
coverage. But I still wouldn't have the level of visual
awareness of activity on the bands that I now have. In the
end those all band all mode radios simply would not have
leant themselves to building this kind of station
configuration to begin with.

The future? Is no doubt SDR, the software for the SDR-1000 is
not yet to the point that it needs to be for me to seriously
consider switching the transverter IF radio duties over to
it. Especially in terms of providing multiple RX's and a
minimum of 150 kHz of spectrum display, the SDR-1000 should
theoretically be capable of all of this and the PowerSDR
software is being written in a somewhat open ended fashion
such that doing this should also be possible software wise.
In any case I feel it is just a matter of time before it will
be.

If you like I can send some JPEG's of my PC screen and the
connection/design layout for the 4 bottom V/UHF bands.

So there's my transverter biased answer :). 

Duane
N9DG


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