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*** My replies to Colin's comments are preceded by asterisks.
>> All good comments - my current reluctance to join the SDR crowd is the
>> expense of buying a Perseus and then getting a laptop with enough horsepower
>> to operate it...
*** Elad is about half the price of Perseus (~ $500 versus ~$1K) and a
competent laptop is about $500 so you're in the door for about a grand.
Compare that to Hammarlund HQ-180A or SP600-JX, Collins R-390A or 51J4,
National NC-183, and other competent '60s era receivers running well "north" of
$300 in '60s money. When scaled to inflation, not to mention what you get now
in the addition of spectrum storage and infinite filter bandwidth choices, even
a Perseus + premium gaming laptop coming in about $2K looks like some kind of
bargain. I can guarantee that you would have had to work more hours in 1967 to
bag a top grade Collins or Hammarlund than you would have to now to get up at
least the ~$1K for an Elad and mid-range (adequate) laptop.
>> For me, another strike against is the whole concept of scooping a swath of
>> spectrum and ?listening to? or searching it ?later on...?
*** This is a problem how? You can still listen live if you want. Best
approach is a mix of live and after-the-fact listening. Live gets you
shortwave and internet parallel options less feasible in a post-facto setting.
Also you can tweak phasers and optimize other antenna settings better.
Captures get you DX at times when you might prefer to be working, sleeping,
eating, shopping, socializing, etc.
>> I work - and I have zero time for hunching over a laptop and snooping
>> through WAV files looking for DX that happened 8-12 hours earlier.
*** In the late autumn and winter, I could see it darkening outside the windows
of my Boston-area office around 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 UTC), about 45 minutes
before sunset, and knew that there was screamer TA DX going on but I couldn't
do a thing about it as I wasn't leaving for home for two more hours and then
there was the traffic jam en route (during which I might get a few of the
bigger blasters on the car radio). By 6 or 7 p.m. EST, domestic splatter was
huge and the TA DX was just a shadow of what I knew it was between 3 and 5 p.m.
when I was still at work. From the '60s through the '90s I could only dream
about being able to listen during the best time for foreign DX which, on this
side of the country, is from an hour before sunset to maybe an hour and a half
after sunset. Listening live at home after dinner only really worked in spring
/ summer with the later sunsets. In the vaunted autumn / winter "DX season"
listening at home after work / commute / dinner was frequently a waste of time.
The good stuff was happening much earlier. So, once again, recording spectrum
is a problem how? I think of it more as a solution.
>> Maybe when I?m retired.
*** Maybe when you're retired you could actually listen live at times when the
DX is good. Seems like you would actually rely less on scheduled recordings
then.
>> I am amped about getting a BeagleBone webSDR up an running from my QTH but
>> was choked when I looked at how expensive it was to get one to CANADA....
>> around twice the price of one in the USA.
*** Aren't you close enough to the border to work out a deal with a DXer on the
US side to buy the gear and drive it up there sometime?
>> I?ll revisit that soon - the idea of having a self contained web receiver
>> with a dedicated processor is appealing. Having an SDR that is d?pendant on
>> the whims of Bill Gates and Windows holds ZERO appeal. Unlink th? receiver
>> concept from a Windows O/S and I?m in.
*** I've run my Perseus successfully since 2009 on various versions of Windows
including XP, 7, and 10. When the laptop is about 5 or so years old and you're
looking for something new for critical business and home programs, take that
older one that still runs your SDR and disable it from any internet usage. OS
gets frozen in place, new apps / programs are not added, no updating happens.
If you're doing that you can also pull out bloatware, anti-virus programs, and
anything not needed to run the SDR and ancillary apps such as Total Recorder
used to create mp3 audio clips. The old laptop, not worth much in the resale
market at that point, becomes dedicated. Bill Gates can come out with Windows
10000 and it won't matter. You can still DX.
>> Colin Newell - Victoria - B.C. CANADA -
*** Mark Connelly, WA1ION - South Yarmouth, MA, USA
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