IF Output FT-5000 vs FT-2000/IF-2000
http://www.eham.net/ehamforum/smf/index.php?topic=107172.0WE1X:
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I've been using various SDRs as panadapters with my TS-590S and TS-990S including the SDR-IQ, Afedri SDR-Net, FunCube Pro+, and SDRplay. I noticed the SDR-IQ's clipping light would flicker when I would initiate an SSB transmission and SDR-Radio Console would display the message to reduce gain. The various SDR applications such as SpectraVu, SDR-Radio, HDSDR allow you to reduce the gain. However, I found that reducing the gain say by 10dB would defeat the purpose of using the SDR-IQ as a panadapter. In the end, the SDR-IQ what gain ahead of its ADC while other SDRs do not. This is likely the challenge. I currently use the SDRplay and it appears to work fine. No, it doesn't appear to have the dynamic range as the SDR-IQ or higher-end SDRs, but for this application I think that's okay.
Harry WE1X