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Reviews For: Winrad

Category: Ham Software/Apps - Other than logging

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Review Summary For : Winrad
Reviews: 2MSRP: ZERO
Description:
Winrad is a free amateur radio program that implements many
Software Defined Radio (SDR) functions which are needed for
weaksignal reception including EME, troposcatter,
cloudscatter, and very long distance microwave terrestrial
contacts. It also works well for general HF reception.
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.winrad.org/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0022.5
TERRYW Rating: 2011-12-04
Winrad 1.61 Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This attempt at an upgrade of SDRadio forces the audio output to have an unacceptably low sample rate, resulting in a high-pitched squawking which accompanies whatever I'm trying to listen to. I verified this on two separate computers with different operating systems and tried two different builds of Winrad. Apart from everything else being well implemented and nicely adjustable, this leaves the software useless. By way of contrast, I'd rate SDRadio a 5 for its excellent sound, ECSS and noise reduction.
KD7RDZI2 Rating: 2010-05-03
Try it! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is an incredible piece of software. I am very surprised here nobody had reviewed here it already.

You can use it with nearly whatever radio you have. If you have a modern SDR such as Softrock it will be probably even control your radio. Instead I had used it with almost any receiver I have to add IF DSP, Digital Noise Reduction, Noise Blanker, Digital AGC, and digital demodulation.
I had used Winrad with:
- a Drake 2C made in 1967;
- a Teletron TE 704 C F/FS which it has at least 25 years;
and three portables such as the Redsun RP2100, a Degen DE1103 and a Sangean 909.
What is all needed it to take the signal from an IF output. If the radio did not have this output I had to find the point where to get the IF out.

The program is nearly perfect. Demodulation is very good and probably much better than the one from the radio... and maybe it can even compete with the current best DSP radios. These may have dedicated DSP units... but sorry I prefer to exploit a dual core computer to perform DSP filtering and demodulation. More I get a nice spectrum about the received output. Compare the monitor of a laptop with the display of... say a 7600... there is no competition!

It has only three drawbacks:
- I cannot calibrate the noise floor (PowerSDR does)
- S meter seems to exceed the actual signal.
- There is no Notch filter (PowerSDR has).

The last but not the least I found it very useful to monitor and tailor the modulation from a old Drake T-4XB. I do even use it to help me in the tuning of the T4XB without transmitting a single watt! I can infact peak the preselector to the right value and choose the right plate position before doing the tuning!