I literally just received mine yesterday and am using it now. A member of the K2GXT radio club here at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) just did a bulk order from China and each one cost around $15 but took a month or two to ship. It seems to work well for the price and has a roughly 40MHz to 1.5 GHz tuning range. I haven't tested it but the receiver seems quite flexible for frequency range but not very sensitive. I'll do some testing next week. The antenna that came with it is pretty much junk and I think it uses a MCX connector so I just ordered some MCX to SMA adapters which should let me seamlessly put a LNA and a good antenna on it which will let me really use it well. I really hope it lets me listen to the AMSAT birds with ease, the LNA will be a must. Lastly, there are quite a few spurs on the bands at first glance.
The circuit is pretty much the same as the FUNCube Dongle, it's even the same IC inside. The difference is that these units are mass-produced and are not optimized for operation on anything but strong TV stations. The designer of the FCD has likely (I haven't seen the schematic) put great effort into optimizing the device for ham use. The FCD also helps support the FUNCube satellite.
Hope this helps.
Bryce KB1LQC
On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 8:34 PM, Mike Hoblinski [email protected]wrote:
I was reading the article in QST January magazine that details turning a DVB-T usb TV Dongle into a SDR receiver with coverage from 64 to 1700 Mhz with some gaps. I was wondering how this differs with the Fun Cube Dongle being sold. The article also shows how to extend coverage to the HF band. The TV Dongles sell for about 20 dollars on ebay.
Mike
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