Product Tag - Balloon

Uputronics filtered preamps for improved reception on 403 MHz (Amateur Balloon tracking).

This is a cost effective SAW based unit which give excellent performance gains.

All Uputronics preamps are compatible with most USB SDR Dongles such as the Airspy. You can power them from either bias tee (This item is 100% compatible with the Airspy bias-tee) or a simple USB minicable (Purchased separately). Bias tee/USB voltage is 5V max.

This unit is a small filter and preamp designed to go between a software defined radio receiver and an antenna. Using a SAW bandpass filter and a low noise amplifier (LNA), it stops out of band intermodulation while providing additional gain for increased sensitivity. The LNA is before the SAW filter. To block strong commercial FM signals a high pass filter is installed before the LNA.

The LNA used is a MiniCircuits PSA4-5043+ which provides at least 21dB of gain. To stop out of band intermodulation a 403Mhz SAW bandpass filter, which has a 15MHz bandwidth is also present. The insertion loss of this filter is approximately 2.3dB, which does increase the overall noise figure of the unit to 0.75dB.

The connectors on both input and output are SMA Female. The external power connector is a USB-C and this revision has a power LED.

Datasheets:
https://store.uputronics.com/files/HAB-FPA_Datasheet_Latest.pdf

Mechanical diagram:
https://store.uputronics.com/files/LNAMechcanicalDiagramV2.pdf