Category: Airspy

Receiving the SAQ VLF Signal with an Airspy + Spyverter and SDRplay RSP

Over on YouTube user Mile Kokotov has uploaded a video showing his reception of the SAQ very low frequency (VLF) signal. The SAQ transmitter is based in Grimeton, Sweden and transmits at 17.2 kHz, which is well below the frequency of most radio communications. SAQ only transmits its beacon on certain days, and last Sunday July 3rd 2016 the SAQ beacon activated to celebrate Alexanderson day, which is named after Swedish radio pioneer Ernst Frederick Werner Alexanderson.

In the video both the Airspy + Spyverter and the SDRplay RSP appear to receive the SAQ VLF signal equally well. In the video description Mile writes:

“SAQ”- Radio Station at Grimeton is a VLF transmission facility at Grimeton, Sweden. It has the only working Alexanderson alternator rotating armature radio transmitter in the world and is classified as a World Heritage Site.

The transmitter was built in 1922 to 1924 to operate at 17.2 kHz. The antenna is a 1.9 km wire aerial consisting of eight horizontal wires suspended on six 127-metre high freestanding steel pylons in a line, that function as a capacitive top-load to feed energy to six grounded vertical wire radiating elements.

Until the 1950s, the Grimeton VLF transmitter was used for transatlantic radio telegraphy to Radio Central in Long Island, New York, USA. From the 1960s until 1996 it transmitted orders to submarines in the Swedish Navy.

The Alexanderson transmitter became obsolete in 1996 and went out of service. However, because it was still in good condition it was declared a national monument and can be visited during the summer.

On July 2, 2004, the Grimeton VLF transmitter was declared a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO. It continues to be used on special occasions such as Alexanderson Day to transmit Morse messages on 17.2 kHz. Its call sign is SAQ.

Recent transmissions from SAQ on 17.2 kHz with Alexaderson 200 kW alternator, was on Alexanderson day (Sunday, July 3rd 2016) at 09:00 UTC.

Distance between SAQ transmitter in Grimeton, Sweeden and Macedonia where the signal was received is about 1850 km.

Receiving with:
1. AIRSPY R2 – SDR + Spyverter and SDRsharp software.
2. SDRplay RSP1 and SDRuno software.

Both SDR receivers settings were previously set for maximum S/N ratio.

Antenna is Mini-Whip 10cm homemade active antenna on 6.5 meter plastic pole.

The LPF filter (fc=535 kHz) is used also.

SAQ VLF Receiving with Airspy+Spyverter and SDRplay

Review of the Airspy Mini

The Airspy Mini is a recently released $99 USD software defined radio with a tuning range of 24 MHz to 1800 MHz, 12-bit ADC and up to 6 MHz of bandwidth. The Mini is the younger brother of the $199 USD Airspy R2, but despite the $100 USD price difference, both units are very similar, which makes the Mini a very attractive option. The idea is that the Mini is the cheaper version for those who do not need the more advanced features of the R2.

In a previous review we compared the Airspy R2 with the SDRplay RSP and the HackRF. In those tests we found that the Airspy had the best overall RX performance out of the three as it experienced the least amount of overload and had the most dynamic range. The SDRplay RSP was the main competitor in performance to the Airspy R2, and was found to be more sensitive due to its built in LNA. But the RSP experienced overloading and imaging problems much easier. With an external LNA powered by its bias tee, the Airspy gained a similar sensitivity and still had very good dynamic range. The main downside to the Airspy R2 was its higher cost compared to the $149 USD SDRplay RSP, and needing to fork even more for the $50 USD SpyVerter if you want to listen to HF signals.

In this review we'll compare the difference between the R2 and Mini, and also see if the cheaper Airspy Mini ($99 USD), or Airspy Mini + SpyVerter combo ($149 USD) can compete in this lower price range. 

Difference Between the Mini and R2

  Airspy Mini Airspy R2
Price $99 USD $199 USD
Tuning Range 24 - 1800 MHz 24 - 1800 MHz
ADC Bits 12 12
Maximum Bandwidth (Alias Free Usable) 6 MHz (5 MHz) 10 MHz (9 MHz)
Extras Bias Tee Bias Tee, External clock input, Multiple expansion headers
Dimensions (Including USB and SMA ports) 7.7 x 2.6 x 1 cm 6.4 x 2.5 x 3.9 cm
Weight 21 g 65 g

Right now the "early bird" price of the Mini is $99 USD. We are unsure if this price will go up in the future.

The external design between the two units is different. The Mini comes in a USB dongle form factor which is very similar to a standard RTL-SDR, whilst the R2 comes in a larger box with a female Micro USB input. In our tests this metal enclosure appears to provide good shielding from strong signals. One thing that was missing on the unit was a nut and washer on the SMA connector. Adding a nut helps the PCB ground make good contact with the aluminum enclosure. The Airspy team have said that future units will come with this nut provided.

Airspy R2 (top), Airspy Mini (Middle), RTL-SDR (bottom) for size comparison.
Airspy R2 (top), Airspy Mini (Middle), RTL-SDR (bottom) for size comparison.

Apart from the price and enclosure, the most noticeable feature difference between the two is the smaller bandwidth of the Airspy Mini. Unlike the Airspy R2, the Airspy Mini does not use a Si5351 clock generator chip. The lack of this chip limits the Mini's maximum bandwidth to 6 MHz and eliminates any ability to use an external clock. The main applications that you miss out on from the lack of an external clock input include: coherent clock, passive radar and direction finding experiments.

From the circuit photos below we can see that the Mini consists of mostly the same parts used in the Airspy R2. Missing is the Si5351 clock controller, expansion headers and the external clock input. 

The Airspy Mini Circuit Board.
The Airspy Mini Circuit Board
Airspy R2 PCB.
The Airspy R2 Circuit Board

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Using the Airspy on an Odroid C2

The Odroid C2 is a $40 single board computer with a 2 GHz ARM-A53 quad core CPU and 2GB of RAM. Compared to a Raspberry Pi 3 it is more powerful and costs about the same. The Airspy R2/Mini is a $199/$99 USD software defined radio that can tune from 24 – 1800 MHz, uses a 12-bit ADC and has a bandwidth of up to 10 MHz. The Airspy wesbite generally recommends that a relatively powerful 3rd generation Intel Core i3 2.4 GHz processor is required for the Airspy.

However, recently the Odroid C2 has proved itself powerful enough to run the Airspy in full 10 MHz mode in GQRX, though without demodulation. On his website Michael DG0OPK shows some screenshots that show the Airspy+Spyverter upconverter combo running on an Odroid C2 and demodulating with the WSJT-X software, running GQRX and running as a spectrum analyzer.

Over on YouTube user radio innovation has also uploaded a video showing the Airspy running GQRX on an Odroid C2.

Leif SM5BSZ’s Testing of the Airspy Mini

Over on YouTube Leif (SM5BSZ) has uploaded two videos showing some of his tests with the new Airspy Mini. Leif is fairly well known within the SDR community for writing the program Linrad and for doing various tests on different SDR’s on YouTube and his website. Recently Leif also did some testing on the SDRplay on a previous video.

In his video he shows how to improve the shielding on the Airspy Mini enclosure by ensuring that a good electrical connection is made between the SMA connector and aluminum enclosure. Improving the shielding reduces out of band interference and USB noise.

The Airspy Mini is a $99 USD software defined radio with up to 6 MHz of bandwidth, a 12 bit ADC and tuning range from 24 MHz to 1800 MHz. If you are interested in the Airspy Mini we will also be doing a review of this SDR soon.

Receiving Inmarsat L-Band AERO with a DVB-T Antenna, Amplifier and Airspy Mini

To show that a specialized antenna is not required to receive L-band Inmarsat AERO satellite signals, YouTube user SkyWatcher has uploaded a video showing how he was able to receive these signals with a cheap DVB-T antenna. SkyWatcher writes:

I’ve recently upgraded from my RTL-SDR sticks (E4000, R820T2) to an Airspy Mini.

I did some testing during the last week and found it very interesting that I was able to receive Inmarsat L-Band signals indoors, with just a DVB-T antenna and amplifier behind the window, no downconverter, no special antenna, no super low-noise amplifier. The window is facing south, with a few degrees to the east and the satellite I’ve received was Inmarsat 15.43W. So, angle antenna to satellite should be estimated 20 degrees.

I’ve used a 18dB DVB-T/Satellite-TV inline amplifier as a ‘LNA’ (noise < 5dB) and a VHF/UHF DVB-T antenna which seems to be a stacked dipole, and therefore should be quite wideband and should make a reasonable general purpose antenna. Anyway, I did not expect it to work on 1.5GHZ at all. Also, I want to mention that the inline amplifier is rated 5 to 18V, but it works just fine with the 4.5V from the Airspy Mini.

It seems that with 10dB S/N, Aero reception is possible and with about 12dB S/N, it is getting reliable.

In general, I am very satisfied with the upgrade to the Airspy Mini. It has a much lower noisfloor and a much cleaner spectrum, compared to my old RTL SDRs. Also, I am very happy with the CPU-usage which is only about 12% on my i5-3210M when using 2.4MHz bandwith, and 18-20% with a bandwith of 4.8MHz.

Together with the ability to use SpectrumSpy and the very useful decimation-feature, the Airspy Mini is the best option to upgrade from a RTL-SDR for me at the moment. Anyway, of course this is just my very personal opinion… 😉

AERO is essentially the satellite based version of ACARS, and the L-band signals contains short ground to air messages with things like weather reports and flight plans intended to be transmitted to aircraft. To decode it with an SDR, the JAERO software can be used.

Airspy Mini: $99 USD, 24 – 1800 MHz, 12-Bit RX SDR Now Available for Preorder

Over the last few months we’d constantly heard hints that the Airspy team was working on a miniaturized version of their popular Airspy SDR. Today the Airspy Mini has been released for preorder.

The Airspy Mini has similar high performance specifications to the Airspy R2, but comes in a USB dongle sized enclosure and only costs $99 USD – half the price of the $199 USD Airspy R2. The only difference in specification appears to be that the Airspy Mini has 6 MHz of spurious free bandwidth, versus 9 MHz in the Airspy R2, and that it lacks the external clock input and some of the expansion headers which are mainly useful only for advanced experimenters. The other features including its 24 – 1800 MHz operation, 12-bit ADC and 0.5 PPM TCXO all remain the same. The Airspy team also write that the Mini still supports a 20 MSPS mode for ADS-B decoding with the ADSBSpy decoder, which should place its ADS-B decoding performance at an identical level to the Airspy R2, which is very good.

The Airspy Mini SDR Dongle
The Airspy Mini SDR Dongle

To receive the HF frequencies the Airspy team are also releasing an Airspy Mini + SpyVerter bundle which will cost $149 USD. The SpyVerter is an upconverter designed to work with Airspy products, but has also been found to work well with the RTL-SDR. 

At these prices the Airspy Mini competes heavily with the $149 USD SDRplay RSP which is a similarly specced SDR. In a previous review on this blog that compared the SDRplay RSP and Airspy R2 we found that the Airspy generally performed better in the presence of strong signals.

In the future we hope to review the Airspy Mini and check to see if its performance is similar to the Airspy R2. If its RX performance is at least the same as the R2, then it probably will be the best value SDR for those wanting to upgrade from an RTL-SDR.

The inside of the Airspy Mini.
The inside of the Airspy Mini.

Using the Airspy as a low cost Spectrum Analyzer with Spectrum Spy

Over on his blog VK4ZXI has been testing the Airspy with the Spectrum Spy software. The Airspy is a $199USD software defined radio that can be considered as a high end upgrade to the RTL-SDR as it has 10 MHz of bandwidth and a 12-bit ADC. The Spectrum Spy software allows the Airspy to be used as wideband spectrum analyzer. In a previous post we reviewed the Spectrum Spy software with the Airspy and found it to have an extremely fast refresh rate. Recent updates since the review have made it even faster.

In his first post VK4ZXI compares the Airspy + Spectrum Spy with the RTL-SDR running RTLSDR-Scanner and Rtl_power, two spectrum analyzer programs written for the RTL-SDR. In his tests he finds that the RTL-SDR and Airspy can obtain similar scans, but the Airspy can scan and refresh the spectrum at much faster speeds than the RTL-SDR, thanks to its 10MHz bandwidth.

Airspy + Spectrum Spy receiving the entire digital TV band over 100 MHz.
Airspy + Spectrum Spy receiving the entire digital TV band over 100 MHz.

In his second post VK4ZXI uses the Airspy + Spectrum Spy together with a cheap BG7TBL noise source to measure the response of a cavity RF filter. This is the same BG7TBL noise source that we used in our “Measuring Filter Characteristics and Antenna SWR with an RTL-SDR and Noise Source” tutorial. The results from the cavity filter measurement show that the Airspy can potentially perform on a level close to an expensive spectrum analyzer.

Measuring the response of a UHF cavity filter with Airspy + Spectrum Spy.
Measuring the response of a UHF cavity filter with Airspy + Spectrum Spy.

Comparing the FunCube Dongle Pro+, Airspy/SpyVerter and SDRplay on Shortwave

Over on YouTube user London Shortwave has uploaded a video showing a comparison of the FunCube Dongle Pro+, Airspy with SpyVerter upconverter and SDRplay on shortwave reception. The Funcube, Airspy and SDRplay are all $150 – $250 USD software defined radios that have much higher performance compared to the RTL-SDR.

In the video he tests the reception of Radio New Zealand International (RNZI) at 9400 kHz using a 6m copper wire dipole and 9:1 matching balun raised 2m off the ground. He did not use any external antenna preselectors. The RNZI station is weak and appears to be almost blocked by a stronger station so reception of the station is difficult.

In his results it appears that the FunCube and Airspy/SpyVerter are able to clearly receive the RNZI station, but the SDRplay has trouble with images of other stations mixing into the signal.

If you are interested in a comparison of the Airspy, SDRplay and HackRF we previously did our own review here.

Portable SDR Shootout Part 1