Tag Archives: rfspace

K6HX QRSS Grabber

For fun, I’ve got my new RFSPACE SDR-IQ running on my laptop using Spectrum Lab and monitoring the 30m QRSS beacon subband. I enabled its HTTP server, and now have set up a little cronscript to copy its display to my webserver once a minute. You can see an example display below (showing KC7VHS, AA5CK and WA5DJJ) or you can click on the link below, and get the live version on QRSS.info

_spectrum

K6HX QRSS Grabber.

I’m not sure why the frequency display on the right is wrong. Anybody have any ideas? I probably have missed something in the configuration of Spectrum Lab, but it’s rather like operating the Space Shuttle…

New gadget in the shack: an RFSPACE SDR-IQ

Well, I got a new gadget in the mail today: an SDR-IQ from rfspace.com. It’s a cute little gadget: a general purpose receiver that can deliver the quadrature signals for any 192Khz of the spectrum anywhere from 100Hz (yes, Hz) to 30Mhz. It is a small black box, with only three connectors: a USB, a regular serial port (used for rig control) and a BNC port for attaching an antenna. I fired it up, and right away started to find interesting things: for instance, here is the frequencies around 5.8Mhz:

2010-01-04_2222-cuban-numbers

If you look carefully, you can see that this is actually an AM signal. The carrier and a couple of sidebands are visible to each side of the received signal. If you click on the signal, and select the AM demodulator, you get the following audio:

AM modulated Morse code at 5.8Mhz, recorded around 06:30, Jan 5, 2010

A quick google of the web indicates that this is a Cuban numbers station. Pretty nifty, and probably never would have discovered it without using the RFSPACE SDR-IQ.

You’ll be hearing more about this gadget in the future.

Addendum: I’m not the only person (obviously) to hear these guys.


httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_YxgDt8aM0