Tim Havens is an avid CW operator on the ham bands and primarily uses his Yaesu FTDX-5000 transceiver for this purpose. At the same time he also uses a software defined radio coupled with an upconverter as a panadapter by connecting the SDR to the 9 MHz IF output of the Yaesu.
However a problem Tim encountered was that the frequency drift of any SDR he tried was too large, even with a TCXO based software defined radio (like a modded RTL-SDR or the Airspy), and that it was a constant hassle to recalibrate. Furthermore, he noticed that the upconverters he used introduced their own drift which just added to the overall frequency drift.
To get around this Tim decided to use the Airspy in a special configuration. First he used the external clock input of the Airspy to connect to his Jackson Labs “Fury” GPSDO. This device uses GPS satellites to generate a very accurate 10 MHz clock, with almost zero drift. Secondly, to get around the need for an upconverter with it’s own frequency drift he used the ADC1 direct sampling input ports on the Airspy to connect to the 9MHz IF output of his FTDX-5000 through an extra band pass filter and LNA.
Tim writes that he will soon update his post with more images and a video.
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