Ham It Up v1.3 Barebones - Nooelec RF Upconverter For Software Defined Radio. Works With Most SDRs Like HackRF & RTL-SDR (RTL2832U with E4000, FC0013 or R820T Tuners); MF/HF Converter With SMA Jacks

I am fully licensed as a radio amateur, but for just receiving 0-30MHz this is a great product. What it does is basically gives you an intermediate signal at 125MHz to pass to realtek dongle which was originally designed for TV via USB reception, but using freely available software you can make this dongle receive around 24MHz to 1700MHz, so clearly, to get frequencies below 24MHz you need to add the upconverter which can receive below 30MHz and present it to the USB dongle at 125MHz, (well away from broadcast commercial radio). With the two items together you have a software defined receiver that goes from 0-1700Mhz in all modes provided by such free software as SDR# (sdr sharp) I did have a small problem to start with, the main crystal was totally missing from my order, for reasons unknown it is not plugged into the board by the seller, but a couple of emails and a bit of waiting had the missing crystal sent to me from USA. I plugged it into the socket on board and it worked fine. It requires a USB A to B connector to power it, this is not included with the board. A neat little switch allows passthrough to allow direct access to your USB realtek dongle which is handy should you wish to use 1090MHz aircraft virtual radar software which shows real time aircraft info on windows PC, again this is free software! The main aerial connectors are SMA, which I bought adapters for because SMA is difficult to connect to coaxial cables, and am now planning on fitting all the bits into one metal box for ease of use. The future of radio really will be software defined, since this requires far less hardware and has so many possibilities that your standard radios just can't do unless you pay thousands of pounds. My whole setup has cost around £50, so for a very capable receiver and signal analyser, why would anyone do it another way? 0-1700MHz is a massive range, and for the money can't be beaten. Making all this work requires only a very basic understanding of electronics, it is more like making Lego fit together than anything, and I'm very impressed with the quality of this item. Delivery is reasonable, around a couple of weeks so all good if you are not in a rush.

Using connected to a RTL-SDR Realtek RTL2832U R820T mini USB dongle and GQRX software built on MacOSX Mavericks via MacPorts. If you previously dabbled with this software you just add minus 125MHz in the right box: ie put "-125.000000 MHz" into the "LNB LO" field in the "Configure I/O devices" sub panel and then frequencies displayed are automatically corrected (you can do more accurate calibration later). All together this set up performs well considering I don't have a significant SW antennae. Its good enough for a casual user exploring SW signals on a computer. Ordered the NooElec Extruded Aluminum Enclosure Kit, Blue from NooElec at the same time to save messing about, a good decision I think as it is the best way of preventing PCB damage and accidental shorts but also shields from any stray RF. Both items arrived in one package in just over a week without gathering additional charges; lucky me. Thank you. The crystal was already in place in the socket. Input RF and output are both female SMA connectors. Was also going to get the equivalent adapters direct from NooElec but these proved to be available a bit cheaper and quicker here: SMA-m to MCX-m and SMA-m to BNC-f You will need a USB cable for power, I use one from an old printer connected to a desk based power only hub. Seems to draw only about 20 mA in use so you could use a socket on your computer if pushed. Pleased with the performance and strongly recommend getting the blue metal box at the same time (add both to basket, then buy).

Suffers a lot from electrical noise. Compared to my cheap chinese SW portable radio (SDR too) it is reasonably sensitive but some frequencies are unusable because of noise where the portable radio with its telescopic aerial, next to my PC can pickup more with less noise when this HamItUp is connected to a multi-band dipole on the roof - connected by Balun and low-loss coax is less sensitive but just picks up noise all the way from 130Khz to 30Mhz and all the way past 500Mhz on "Pass through" I powered this and a PC (at 5m away) from batteries to lower some of the noise caused by noise on the DC and coupling. This needs ferrite beads too. NooElec are generally good products but need to re-design for compatibility.

Works well, but I found that it wasn't necesarry for accessing freq's that I was interested in so probably a waste of a purchase. except that I'm pretty sure it will be useful for something one day so worth keeping around. It works, it wasn't super expensive and it's a handy little gadget to have lying around to experiment with. Thats all I really wanted it for so no complaints here.

1st class board works well and well built. but delivery very slow, sent via Royal Mail.

I'm absolutely delighted with this product. It is very sensitive and combines perfectly with an RTL dongle to provide a relatively inexpensive but highly effective introduction to Software Defined Radio. The frequency coverage is extremely wide, going from way below Long Wave to beyond 50 MHz. It is really great to be able to watch all those signals coming down the waterfall, and to be able to 'see' a whole wave band on one screen. This is a very solidly made bit of kit, although the crystal oscillator is simply pushed into a socket (according to the manufacturer to allow use of different crystals). You will also need two additional adapter leads to connect an aerial to the input and to connect the output from the upconverter to the RTL dongle - but the leads can be sourced quite cheaply. Power can be supplied via a USB printer type lead plugged into a separate USB socket on the computer. I also decided to fit mine inside a die cast alloy project box. To get an idea of what this plus an RTL dongle can do, search the web for websdr - there are a growing number of receiving stations around the world broadcasting the output from Software Defined Radio over the internet and you can tune it remotely. The big advantage of having your own upconverter is that you are receiving signals in your own location through your own aerial. Overall, I am very impressed and I thoroughly enjoy using it. Edited to add: Since investing in a ham radio transceiver (having renewed my ham licence through Ofcom) I now use the upconverter to great effect by connecting it to the 9MHz IF output on the radio. That then feeds through the RTL dongle into a USB socket on the computer. Using free SDR sofware I can monitor the whole width of whichever band the transceiver is tuned to. I can then immediately spot where the strongest stations are on the screen - brilliant!

It took 5 minutes to fit the board into the matching case that I also bought from NooElec, plug it into my RTL dongle and fire up SDR#. After a few minutes configuration I was getting good signals on the HF Amateur bands - as good as, and sometimes even better quality, than the receive on my Yaesu FT817 and BHi DSP speaker set-up. I5 minutes later I tripped over a cable and broke my RTL dongle :-) . I've ordered a new one from NooElec with the improved R820T2 tuner and I hope this tuns up as fast as the Ham It Up converter which only took 6 days, not too bad from the USA. No delays or issues with HM Customs either.

Having already purchased an RTL DVB dongle and had it working on VHF radio,. I thought I would expand it's capabilities with this upconverter. It came from the US and took a few days to arrive. I didn't have the mini plugs to fit the RF in/out sockets so carefully soldered my RF in/out leads to the back of the sockets. This done, I soon had it up and running with SDR# and HDSDR programs. You need to adjust the ALC and/or RF gain controls in the software for best results but once you get the hang of this it works very well, and I am able to receive short wave broadcast stations and SSB signals on the amateur bands. If you like short wave listening this is a fun way to do it.

If you're into SDR radio stuff this is a must have for frequencies below 25 MHZ. It works good too

Lo compré junto con dos Nooelec SMArtSDR y poder montar un servidor websdr con Raspberry Pi bajo Raspbian. Es prácticamente necesario si se quieren recibir frecuencias en la banda HF ya que el SDR por si solo se queda sordo por debajo de los 100Mhz. El producto se ve bien acabado y hace lo que se espera, en mi caso con una antena dipolo-V echa con cable (5m aprox por hilo) recibe bastante bien multitud de frecuencias en HF. Se echa en falta una toma de 5v para no depender de la toma USB y quizás también el poder sacar unos pines para un conmutador externo del passthrough (para los que nos gusta cacharrear un poco) En definitiva buen producto, combinado con el NEDSDR y dos antenas más o menos decentes tienes al alcance un receptor capaz de recibir un buen rango de frecuencias.

20%誤差の抵抗値が実際は２０％も指針をずらしてますけど。 その理由から0.8鈴メッキ線が使えません。 ミキサーを組んでいるのですが使えるアウトプット用カップリングコンデンサを4.7uF/250VSantanにしました。抵抗誤差からくる問題ですべてを組めませんでした。日本国内からすべてを調達して最初からやり直しになります。ここまでの時間はなんだったのだか、 しかしこんな部品設計で潜水艦とかロケットミサイルとか人工衛星つくってたのでしょうね。はっきり言ってもらわせるとやめた方がいいですよ。こんなやつは国を亡ぼしますよねぇ

E' un ottimo upconveter da usare con gli SDR tipo quelli economici basati sui chip RTL 2832 (o anche con airspi) per la ricezione delle frequenze HF da 0 a 30 mhz. Ha un buon LNA dentro, e la conversione si disinserisce con l'apposito interruttore. Si alimentra tramite usb (anche un alimentatore da cellulare va bene). Indispensabile prendere anche la scatola in metallo per renderlo un oggetto completo, e la isola anche da interferenze esterne. Il fatto poi di "alzare" la frequenza di 125 Mhz lo rende migliori di quelli che alzano di 100 Mhz (che finiscono nella disturbata zona delle stazioni FM commerciali) Per il prezzo che ha è il migliore upconveter in circolazione.

Probably the best, if not one of the best app converter’s for SDR radio use in the HF frequency band. It’s a great place to start, especially if you’re radio has no app converter built into it, otherwise you won’t be able to receive those AGF or lower frequencies. (The new plus version of this particular up converter is also a great place to start as it goes even way lower in frequency.) This version, is the ‘second version’ of the NooELEC upconverter, and preferred over the old first version. You can’t get much better than this, and is built with and by Canadians AND Americans, so you know it’s of the highest build quality! (As soon as I’ve got the cash I’m liable to buy another one of these, including the new ‘plus’ version to get all those juicy low to ultra-low frequencies that are just out of reach of this particular upconverter. That being said, this unit is still an excellent way to get into shortwave listening and is a MUST if your RTL-SDR radio has none included in it’s internal circuitry. Connecting to the HF antenna without an upconverter will get you nothing, so you need this to be complete. It’s what I tell my friends who are interested in Shortwave and HF listening.