Now that diversity reception has been integrated into Eric's pb-pal branch, I've been using that version for a few days now. It has indeed met my expectations in that I don't have to use an MFJ-1026 any more. Actually I haven't had the MFJ unit hooked up recently anyway. I am often able to null out little birdies, but not always. I am convinced that the diversity feature in PowerSDR can replace my MFJ 1026.
That said, there is a lot I need to learn about antenna pairs. I usually run two different transmitting antennas, one for 80/40 meters and another for 30 thru 10 meters. Both are fed w/ balanced line w/ TRUE balanced tuners. My secondary receiving antenna is a somewhat bent GAP Titan DX that got a little twisted in a wind storm. I've been meaning to take it down, because the SWR is off. But it suits my purposes just fine as a noise antenna. But the MFJ 1026 and the Timewave ANC-4 refer to a noise antenna as a secondary antenna to null against w/ phase and amplitude adjustments, just the two adjustments Bob has added to PowerSDR. The best info I've found to date is the W9OY blog. I don't have his real estate foot print. My vertical is less than 20 feet from my two transmitting antennas. But I still can get a good null, but not always. I've searched the internet for more info on diversity reception, but there is not much out there. I've noticed a bug in SVN 3519, but I won't post it yet because I can't duplicate it at will. Sometimes I will get a signal showing in the bandpass of rx2 on the panadapter, but switching off the audio in rx1 reveals that the dial frequency of rx2 if incorrect. I have VFO lock on. Usually I can get it to work if I unlock the VFOs, tune up and down the band on rx2, change the rx2 mode, and then the mode back to match rx1, and then relock the VFOs. Often I will then get better nulling when re-enabling diversity. I think the diversity reception feature needs to be better touted by Flex, of course when it gets released to production. An internet search reveals that K3 users are bragging about diversity reception, but they are talking about stereo reception in the headphones and not the phase/amplitude nulling that Bob has created. It is a whole different ball game, a feature that can make receiver performance numbers have much much less meaning IMHO. 73, Steve N6VL _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using alpha and beta versions of the software.
