AirSpy HF+ Discovery Information
The STEMLab's HF Bench includes two AirSpy HF+ Discovery software defined radios.
These are excellent receivers that can tune over the entire HF band and part of the VHF bands. Being very small (45 x 60 x 10 mm) and light they are highly portable and can be used almost anywhere with a laptop or a Raspberry Pi.
The maximum sampling bandwidth is just 912kS/s which is less than most others we talk about. Even so they can reasonably cover any of the amateur HF bands at a time. OpenWebRX+ is set up with multiple profiles so you can select the individual HF band you want to tune to.
The available bandwidths that Airspy publishes are: 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 96, 128, 192, 256, 384 and 768 KHz. They added 912 KHz in a later firmware update.
- Interface: USB 2.0 (Micro-USB)
- Lowest HF frequency: 0.5 MHz
- Highest HF frequency: 31 MHz
- VHF frequency range: 60 MHz - 260 MHz
- Max receive bandwidth: 912 KHz
- Price: in the $180 range
- Size: 45 x 60 x 10 mm
There are certain sampling bandwidths that work well for us in OpenWebRX+. Trying to use other bandwidth values produced suboptimal results or just plain didn't work at all. In general values in kS/s that are powers of two would work. The setup we ended up using is shown in the table below.
- 192 KHz for 12, 30 and 40 meters
- 256 KHz for 17 meters
- 384 KHz for 20 meters
- 456 KHz for 15 meters
- 768 KHz for 10 and 80 meters
OpenWebRX+ Profiles
The specific OpenWebRX+ configurations for each of the SDRs
References:
- Airspy USA Website 🔗 AirSpy USA
- Airspy HF+ Discovery SDR Information 🔗 AirSpy HF+ Discovery SDR
Note: PARC does not sell or endorse any products mentioned in these pages.
Information is provided for education and instructional purposes only.