Ham It Up v1.3 Barebones - Nooelec RF Upconverter for Software Defined Radio. Works with Most SDRs Like HackRF & RTL-SDR (RTL2832U with E4000, FC0013 or R820T Tuners); MF/HF Converter with SMA Jacks

This review is for the Ham It Up V1.3 ONLY.For me the hardest part getting this setup correctly was knowing exactly how to set the offset in the SDR# program I'm using. Once I figured out that I needed to set the shift to -125,000,463 (that's negative 125,000,463) everything fell into place. With that offset I'm able to just set the frequency I want to listen to directly in SDR#. Tuning to WWV at 10Mhz and 15Mhz helps a lot while confirming your shift.I compared received signals between this SDR setup and my Kenwood TS450SAT on the same 80M dipole and I'll say that this is slightly less sensitive than the Kenwood, but not much. Certainly very usable and a good way to explore SDR for not a lot of money.I've got all this working under Windows 10 through a USB 2,0 hub in case ayone is concerned about compatibility. I also installed this board in the NOOELEC metal enclosure designed for this board.Don't skimp on the external cabling, either. Get the correct adapters and don't jury rig those. They are readily available here on Amazon.

I own a few NooElec products—this and the matching enclosure, two NESDR SMArt units, and a Balun One-Nine—all of which are nicely built (in the US and Canada, no less) and backed by excellent customer service. The TXCO in my Ham It Up is extremely stable, as are both of my NESDR SMArts. Like, really, really stable. No drift. When I've bounced random questions off the NooElec support team on a few occasions, I've received friendly, knowledgeable, professional service with a surprisingly fast turnaround time.When choosing an upconverter, I narrowed things down to the Spyverter and the Ham It Up. I ultimately went with this unit, largely on account of my positive experiences dealing with the company. The Ham It Up's RF noise generator (requires soldering an SMA female connector to the board) is also a nice plus, and will be handy when testing other gear. For those of you who have a receiver with a bias tee, like the Airspy or RTL-SDR, you might want to consider the Spyverter.Not a paid shill, just a happy customer.

Bought this with the R820T USB dongle from the same company, works great. Great service and support from NooElec, fast responses to my emails. Some of the ham software is kinda sketchy with a few GUI inconsistencies when it comes to frequency etc (the software is being updated constantly though). This has the 25MHz xtal to get it out of the FM band so I used an offset of -125,000,000 in the SDRSharp (most docs say use -100,000,000 which is for the 100MHz xtal) and tweaked from there. I think I had an adjustment of around 12 or something to get the peak just right on frequency after warmup.Also used the USB stick and this with a Raspberry Pi, connecting to it from a Windows machine using TCP.Now just need to get it into a box, hardwired (I dislike the small MCX connector) and will probably use a N type connector to easily swap antennas to experiment more.If you are a beginner, it will for sure be frustrating (the software and dongle that is - this upconverter simply plugs in) to get it running with the software, but there are a lot of guides out there.

This product works very well, it does what its designed to do great, but for power I soldered 2 wires directly to the board and provide 5V that way as I didn't like the tiny micro usb connector for the 5V power input. Maybe its common practice today for devices to use micro usb but its way to small and weak to be using this on the bench for radio work. They should have used a brarrel type connector for power. 12V input with an onboard 5V regulator would seem more logical to me as most hams use 12V supplies for their Mobile/Bench radios already. I understand that this product was intended for the RTL, Funcube Dongle market and hence the usb power requirement but you will require two independant usb ports to supply enough power for both devices and not an unpowered usb hub as it will cause a usb power supply error on your PC if you try it without a powered hub.My concern was valid as another Ham friend of mine has already broken his micro usb connecor off the board.Also they don't provide the micro usb cable for power so this an additional expense.The worst thing about this unit is that I haven't found a suitable project box to put this into yet, I would have paid a little extra if it had been boxed from the manufacturer. I know its sold for the Ham market and us Hams are supposed to be able to build things from spare parts etc, but for the cost of a plastic box , maybe even a metal box. I think most people would pay a little extra. What this does lack is an extra connector for a seperate VHF/UHF and HF Input so you can leave both HF/VHF antennas connected and switch between them with the onboard switch. The switch provides a pass though option only. The price is good compared to other up-converters on the market but I hope they add a box and different power option in the future.

running 100 ft wire and broadcast band filter gain set at 0 , to much overload to listen to any usable signal under 5 mhz not even WWV. OK for shortwave reception between 6-11 mhz at night . also not that good for ham bands on ssb.