Tuesday, November 05, 2019

SDRPlay RSPdx SC Field Test

FB post by Paul Jones in the Charleston SC area to the SDRPlay FB group. "Ok as you all know, I started this group SDRPlay as a unofficial group about the RSP's, then I started working for ELAD, but I continued to be a tester for SDRPlay, over the past few years, I've managed to gather a small collection of SDR's , all the SDRPlay Range from the 1 to the latest RSPdx, and obviously all the ELAD Radios, well I do work for them... :) and a few more, including the revered Perseus. Last night the LW signals were amazing here, so I decided to do a comparison test, trying not to be biased towards Elad, but they are in a different price range, the next step up from SDRPlay SDR's My Location is just outside of Charleston, SC in the USA, and the target station was Medi1 out of Morocco on 171kHz All signals just above the noise floor,
Perseus Just about see the signal, audio is just
about readable,
Airspy HF+ barely see the signal, can tell audio is there but can't make it out.
LimeSDR hmmm joke waste of my money
Elad S2 just about hear and see the station, readable
RSP1 Nothing
RSP1a just about hear and see, just about readable almost as good as the Perseus
RSPDuo Similar to RSP1a
RSP2Pro worse than 1a to be expected I guess
RSPdx good signal and almost perfectly readable
Elad S3 just a wee tad better than the RSPdx, clear audio ($800 more)
Elad DuoR using SW2 about on par with RSPdx ($700 more)
Using 120ft longwire via a 9:1 grounded, couldn't compare S3 in Uno as extio's are not available yet (Radio isn't publicly available yet)...all tested at about 500khz Bandwidth or as close to. I do have better antennas but this was the setup at the time
RSPdx was in HDR mode LW button, then improved signal by using LIF 1.536mhz at 16 decimation 200khz and it was that was closest to Elad-S3 and better than the RSPDuo
All with noise floor around s5, signal showing around s6-8
So in order of best to worst
Elad-S3, RSPdx, Elad DuoR, Elad-S2(add-on filters not used), Perseus, (RSP1a, RSPDuo Both about same) Elad-S1, Airspy HF+, RSP1, LImeSDR
This isn't a LAB grade test, it was made using the MK1 Brain, Eyes and Ears, We could go into details, but whats 0.1 of a dB between friends.....and if you can't hear the station, what's the point of all the noise figures...
Paul - NN4F - EladUSA Guru / SDRPlay Mike ladd Wannabe
Pic is the RSPdx using latest 1.33 SDRUno using HDR mode on Antenna C