Tuesday, June 21, 2011

More Details on Winradio Excalibur Pro

Well, it looks like the Winradio WR-G33DDC Excalibur Pro is considerably closer to market. As we know, it has been vapor for quite some time, but now one has been shown at the recent Dayton Hamvention.

Winradio has also updated the spec sheet. As promised, this is indeed the high-end version of its digital down-conversion design for a software defined radio (SDR).

The specs, though not verified by any independent testing yet, are quite remarkable. But, since it's a DDC design, so is the demand on computing resources. A 2 GHz dual-core processor is the absolute minimum, and a 2.4 gig quad-core is required for full features. I would also imagine that, when you're in full rock and roll processing the 4-MHz RF bandwidth in real time, that your desktop supercomputer is not good for much else.

The software appears to offer some powerful features. Winradio claims that its spectrum analyzer can display up to the radio's entire 9 kHz to 49.99 MHz bandwidth simultaneously in real time, while you also receive three simultaneous and completely independent signals.

No US prices or availability dates are known here. A price of 1800 Euros has been published by a foreign dealer. At the current exchange rate, that works out to a cool $2600 American.