[NLRS] Softrocks appear to ROCK!

[Ford Peterson]

I have been following the new little Quadrature mixer project known as the softrock series of receiving mixers.  These are amazing devices.  The beauty of the SDR for all of $20!  I'm not kidding--$20!

Yes, you do need a decent sound card to get decent performance, but the software is basically free.  In fact, you can download the very same SDR 1000 software that Mike-KM0T is using with his SDR 1000 and successfully use it with this little $20 device.  Provide an antenna, 12v, use the softrock device to produce I and Q baseband, and the software does the rest--all of the rest!  SSB, CW, PSK, blah-blah-blah fill-in-the-blank mode.

A softrock measures about 1" x 1.5" and can be set up for just about any band.  The current version of the board for 10M is known as the Softrock V7.0.  Check out the yahoogroups website.

Here is a posting from some guy calling himself patbilldavis.  It is unsigned so I cannot tell who he is--he posted it today on the Softrock40 at yahoogroups.com reflector.  But he used it in the VHF contest with good results...  His reference to "Rocky" is some software by Alex-VE3NEA of DX ATLAS/IONOPROBE/HAMCAP fame.  I cannot find a link to his Rocky website, but dig and it will show up.

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 The June ARRL VHF QSO party was a great testing grounds for the use
of the Ver7 based 2meter receiver. Rocky ran for the entire contest
with no problem displaying 96kc around 144.200. (Used with a
144Mhz-28Hmz converter)

  Fantastic for watching for new stations during the contest, watching
for rovers returning (favorite frequency) and really worked great on
the 2m Eskip we had into EN37ed during the contest... all 1hr 8min of
2m Es!

  Using Rocky for display of the 10Ghz 2m IF has removed frequency
concerns from 10Ghz operations. During rainscatter, "worry" only about
the dish AZ and EL and watch Rocky for the signal... COOL!!

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I currently own V5 for 20M, 2 version 6 for 160M and 80M, and one V7 for 10M.  All of these are kits provided by Tony-KB9YIG.  They come out so dang fast I can't even get them together before you end up getting another new kit of parts!  Here is a website that goes into the so-called "Softrock40" that started the whole parade of new versions.  

http://www.amqrp.org/kits/softrock40/index.html

This particular version is no longer available, but it describes the Quadrature detector in detail.  Frankly, there are only a handful of parts needed to make this stuff work, and 100% of it is available at DigiKey.  It seems like the hot setup for VHF/UHF using a 10M IF.  

I've personally played with the HF versions and find that they are simply awesome performers--even with the generic built-in sound card on my ancient PC in the shack.  At only 8 bits, it is has a somewhat high noise floor.  But with a $99 sound card like the Delta44, well, you get the idea.  

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com