SLSRC May General Meeting & Program, “How to Add a Panadapter to Your Older Radio”

The May St. Louis & Suburban Radio Club general meeting will be held ON-LINE on the 22nd of May at 6:45 pm. The program will be “How To Add A Panadapter To Your Older Radio.”  We encourage you to start the stream at 6:45 pm and interact with us in the chat.  If your username is not your name or call sign, we ask you to place your name and call sign at the front or end of your chat statement to identify who is talking.  To say something in the chat, you must have a Google account. Our program will be presented by Bill Cowley NØWGC.

Bill started in Amateur Radio in the early 70’s while in High School. He lived on a farm and set up a 50’ tower as WN8ØUV. His uncle NØKKS got him started in Amateur Radio and also in Navy MARS.  Back then there was a lot of message traffic from the military to pass to their families.  Bill completed an Electrical Engineering degree at Michigan State.  Bill dropped out of Amateur Radio with his 1st job in California where he took up Scuba Diving.  Since then, Bill has worked in the computer field at large and small businesses.  Retiring in 2017 he started studying for the Amateur Radio Licenses, passing Tech, General, and Extra that year and is now known as NØWGC.

Many radios do not have a screen to show a waterfall display but have a computer-aided transceiver (CAT) control (either as an RS-232 or USB). By adding computer control to the radio and Software Defined Radio (SDR), the older transmitter can be upgraded (receiver section) with a computer screen display.

A panadapter is a device that allows you to visually see the RF spectrum and waterfall being received by the ham radio or directly from the antenna.

The presentation talks about the steps to add an SDRPlay and using Omni-Rig to control the current supported CAT enabled transmitter. Signals can be “seen” on the panadapter and by clicking on them, it moves the transmitter to that frequency and is ready to transmit.

Let us all fire up our computers and learn how we can retrofit our older radios with a PAN adapter by attending this program ON-LINE. Click on the link below to join our club’s YouTube Channel and enjoy the meeting and program. Please join in. 

https://www.youtube.com/c/slsrc(w0src)/live