Over on his blog rtlsdr4everyone, Akos has posted two new reviews. One post reviews the latest ham-it-up v.13 upconverter and the other reviews the “Balun 1:9” impedance transformer.

An upconverter allows you to receive HF frequencies (0-30 MHz) with an RTL-SDR which has a lower frequency limit of 24 MHz.  The ham-it-up upconverter was one of the first upconverters to go on the market that targeted users of the popular RTL-SDR dongle. Over the years the ham-it-up has slowly been revised and now it is up at version 1.3. The biggest changes in the latest version are a revised design that uses the ADE-1 in reverse (better VLF operation), a presoldered oscillator and it also now includes the previously optional noise source by default. 

In his review Akos compares the ham-it-up v1.3 to the older v1.2 model. His results show that the revised design seems to have better immunity to noise and better FM broadcast filtering. He also tests out the new battery power via connection and shows that using battery power is less noisy.

Previously we posted a review comparing the ham-it-up v1.0, SpyVerter and Nobu’s Japanese upconverter. Although the ham-it-up v1.3 is much improved and we have not tested it, we still believe the SpyVerter is the better upconverter choice at the moment due to its better architectural design and included metal case, though Akos does point out that the ham-it-up is currently about $15 USD cheaper and has a passthrough switch.

In his second post Akos reviews the Balun 1:9 which is a $10 balun that is designed for attaching a long wire antenna to the ham-it-up. The goal of the balun 1:9 is to transform the high impedance long wire antenna down to around 50/75 Ohms for the receiver. In Akos’ results he writes that he mostly see’s identical or better performance with the balun connected.

To add to Akos’ review, we want to note that we think that there might be some confusion over baluns and ununs. We wonder if a 9:1 unun (instead of a balun) should be used for a long wire antenna, since a long wire is an unbalanced antenna. We think a balun should be used for a balanced antenna such as a dipole. In his review Akos also found that connecting two longwire antennas to the spring terminals improved reception. This may have possibly been because adding two longwires essentially created a balanced dipole antenna. To implement a longwire antenna unun with a balun, we think that the second terminal and coax shield should be connected to a good ground source like a cold water pipe. If you have knowledge on this topic please comment to confirm or expand on our theory.