Tag Archives: softrock

First signals heard through the Softrock Lite II

Well, I’m not sure that the Softrock I put together is working entirely well. I’m beginning to believe that the transformer that I wound might be bad. My receiver seems a bit deaf, and also seems to have only about 20db or so of opposite side rejection (I’m getting images of signals on both sides of the center carrier frequency). I’m a bit stymied by the fact that I only have my macbook in a place where it can be used to decode the softrock, and the software for it is, well, to a first approximation, there isn’t any. I did a bit of hacking, and took a recording I made and extracted this Morse code recording, which I’ll archive here as the first that I ever got.

Morse via my Softrock

I’ll have to work on it some more in the future, but for now, I’m back to beaconing with my FT-817.

Softrock Lite II arrive!

On Saturday, I sent a check off to Tony Parks, KB9YUG on Saturday along with my order for two Softrock Lite II receiver kits: one for 40m, and the other for 30m. I hope eventually to liberate my FT-817 from its current beacon duties on my grabber site and replace it with this simple little $12 receiver. Not sure I’ll get to it this weekend, I’m a little out of practice for my surface mount soldering technique, but I’m hoping to get to it soon.

In the mean time, here’s a link to WB5RVZ’s awesome builder’s website to show you what it all entails.

Softrock Softrock Lite II Builders’ Notes