Monday, January 24, 2011

FUNcube

FUNcube - Received

My FUNcube - S/N 212 - was received today (near Seattle) after 10 days in route, see previous post for ordering adventure.



It came in a small static bag, within a neat little soap box (great idea), inside of a bubble wrap envelope, with lots of postage, routing and customs declaration stickers attached.

Within 15 minutes of arrival, I was listening via a short wire for and antenna.

I used the suggested "Windows full-on front end" - the "FUNcube Dongle Frequency Control" software to set the receive (LO) frequency, and I used the "HDSDR" program to view the waterfall and decode the audio. Note: without direct control of the LO from "HDSDR", it's reported frequency was manually set to match that of the FUNcube.

I connected my FT-817 to a shielded Dummy Load (several feet away), and tuned it to 440.000MHz. And then I quietly spoke the word "Test" into the microphone. About one second later my test word was heard on the computer speaker (the delay was the typical SDR decoding delay). The resulting waterfall erroneously indicated the FT-817 was on 439.9865MHz.

It looks like the first test was successful, but the FUNcube LO Frequency may need some calibration.


Now I need to work on building a real antenna, maybe a simple disk cone.

Just, more FUN(cube) and things to learn!


Thanks to: Howard!


- Follow the FUNcube Label Link below to follow ALL of my FUNcube adventures.

--

No comments:

Post a Comment