Airwaves

RF Monitoring in the Ohio Valley

Archive for the ‘digital’ tag

SDRPlay RSP – VHF / UHF / Trunking mini review

2 comments

I recently purchased an SDRPlay RSP. Why? Only to see if the hype, which I did not believe, was true. I’ve got Airspys and R820T tuners already. My main interests are VHF/UHF digital signal decoding / trunking.

If your main interest is HF and you’re reading this mini-review, leave now. I have no use for HF / no desire to monitor HF. I don’t know nor care how the SDRPlay performs as a panadapter or anything else. It might be golden on HF. But that isn’t what this mini-review is about.

Why the SDRPlay is a fail for VHF/UHF digital decoding and trunking

  • Not supported by Unitrunker (as of 4-7-2016)
  • Not supported by DSDPlus (as of 4-7-2016)
  • Not supported by SDRTrunk (as of 4-7-2016)
  • Doesn’t handle adjacent channel interference as well as the Airspy
  • Doesn’t handle strong signal overload as well as the Airspy

For only $50 dollars more you can purchase the Airspy, which is supported by Unitrunker, DSDPlus, SDRTrunk, GNURadio / OP25, and pretty much any SDR software you can obtain on the internet. And if that isn’t enough of a reason, the Airspy simply outperforms the SDRPlay in every configuration / environment that I’ve used both devices.

No, I’m not posting numbers. I don’t have test equipment. I use the equipment and compare the equipment using the same computers, cables, jumpers, coax and antennae. And I’m totally convinced that the Airspy has better performance on VHF/UHF with regard to handling a band full of signals or strong signal overload.

If your opinion is different, oh well — You are entitled to it. If you don’t like my review, you can print it out and then wipe your ass with the paper if it makes you feel better.

Back to using my virtually bulletproof Airspys to trunktrack and record an LSM system while monitoring 6 control channels of a statewide trunking system.

Written by awadmin

April 8th, 2016 at 8:54 pm