Back in February of this year we first heard about the Airspy HF+, which is an upcoming product from the Airspy team that is intended to be a high performance HF receiver at a low price. Over on the Airspy HF+ website the first (rendered) image of the unit has recently been released. We’ve also managed to get some additional renderings from the Airspy team which we show in the image slider below.
The enclosure is CNC carved aluminum with two SMA ports on one side, and a USB port on the rear. Since the HF+ actually has the capability to tune up to 260 MHz it uses two SMA inputs, one for an HF antenna and one for a VHF antenna. Inside the RF circuit is shielded again with a shielding can to protect it from USB noise.
The tweet below also appears to show some grounding improvements made to reduce USB noise.
The Airspy HF+ is also the result of a long learning journey and a great attention to details. USB noise is past! cc @ITeadstudio pic.twitter.com/6RJykinRWq
— prog' (@lambdaprog) June 14, 2017
Other recent tweets from prog (the creator of the Airspy HF+) indicate that the hardware is ready, and show that streaming from with SpyServer from a RPi3 is functional. Hopefully we should be seeing this unit release for sale soon.
Digital modes FTW. Streaming from Airspy HF+ and RPi3 pic.twitter.com/F9L0ctWa9O
— prog’ (@lambdaprog) June 4, 2017