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W9RAN's "VERSA-TR" (as featured in Dec. 2018 QST)

A Versatile T/R solution for SDRs and vintage radios

New Product Announcements 11/11/2018

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Posted By: Robert Nickels (ranickels)
Posted on 11/11/2018

Inexpensive Software Defined Radios offer excellent performance and value for hams and SWLs, but they lack key features that are needed for actual use on the air:

Provision for automatically muting the speakers when transmitting, to eliminate overloading and audio feedback.
A sidetone to monitor CW keying. SDRs do not provide a CW sidetone, and even worse, the time delay resulting from digital signal processing (“latency”) makes it impossible to monitor one’s own signal as can be done with a conventional receiver.
A convenient means of switching the antenna between the transmitter and the SDR receiver and protecting the receiver input during transmit.

The VERSA-TR was designed to address these shortcomings of SDRs, but also makes it easy to put low-power vintage and conventional radios together to create an integration station with automatic T/R switching, muting, and CW sidetone. Only the antenna connections need be made since RF sensing eliminates the need to wire up relay contacts and muting circuits. Regular or amplified PC speaker muting is plug-and-play.

The VERSA-TR can be used in a variety of ways with transmitters range from < 1 watt to 100 watts output, for CW, AM, SSB or other modes. Watch this site for application notes showing various configurations and applications.

The VERSA-TR is available as an easy-to-build kit using all through-hole components from our friends at Hayseed Hamfest:

https://hayseedhamfest.com/products/ran-technology-versa-tr-switch


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Crystal Replacement Posted: 08/226/2024 Comments: 0	Making SMT "no lead" parts easier to use SMT is the future - but how can we actually use parts without leads? ... READ MORE
Crystal Replacement Posted: 02/38/2024 Comments: 0	How good can a crummy receiver be? Hundreds of different simple SDR receivers have been designed around Dan Tayloe's Quadrature Sampling Detector or QSD. Mine add nothing to the state of the art, and in fact subtract things, as I like minimalist solutions and the QSD is right in that sweet spot. Following the evolution of Tayloe's design I delete the resistors in series with the sample lines for inst... READ MORE
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Crystal Replacement Posted: 11/327/2023 Comments: 0	Replacing failed crystals For decades, quartz crystals were used everywhere a stable frequency source was needed, even in some applications that depended on overtone (harmonic) behavior into the VHF range. These crystals were less stable and more dependent on circuit parameters that fundamental types and thus more problematic. Such was the case with the 94 MHz crystal in the 2 meter converter ... READ MORE
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Products Posted: 12/10/2018 Comments: 0	How To Get Tech Help From Strangers On The Internet Paul Stoffregen is the creator of the Teensy microcomputer and related products and has authored a vast amount of exceptionally good and useful public domain software to go with it. As the old saying goes "no good deed goes unpunished" and in the course of answering customer and would-be customer questions, Paul has written over 18,000 replies. From that he's ... READ MORE
Products Posted: 11/11/2018 Comments: 0	VERSA-TR purchasing The VERSA-TR kit designed by RAN Technology Inc. is available from our friends at Hayseed Hamfest. Please direct all order-related questions to them at https://hayseedhamfest.com/pages/contact-us ... READ MORE

Products

Posted: 12/10/2018
Comments: 0

How To Get Tech Help From Strangers On The Internet

Paul Stoffregen is the creator of the Teensy microcomputer and related products and has authored a vast amount of exceptionally good and useful public domain software to go with it. As the old saying goes "no good deed goes unpunished" and in the course of answering customer and would-be customer questions, Paul has written over 18,000 replies. From that he's ... READ MORE

Products

Posted: 11/11/2018
Comments: 0

VERSA-TR purchasing

The VERSA-TR kit designed by RAN Technology Inc. is available from our friends at Hayseed Hamfest. Please direct all order-related questions to them at https://hayseedhamfest.com/pages/contact-us ... READ MORE