Did I brick my RSP1A

[checksumParticipant]

Hi, new to RTL-SDR here. Have an RSP1A and an MLA-30. Hooked everything up and accidentally clicked the bias tee button inside SDRUno in addition to using the supplied bias tee. To clarify, the RSP1A was hooked to the receive port, there was a 5V USB input hooked to power, and the antenna was hooked to the antenna port on the supplied bias tee, AND the RSP1A was in bias-tee mode. Bias tee got extremely hot before I noticed something was up. Now the bias tee doesn’t work, fairly certain I torched something.

I can still pick up HF signals when I power the MLA 30’s pre-amp out of the RSP1A’s bias tee and don’t use the presumably broken bias tee that came with the antenna. Do you think the receiver is OK? Just looking for some reassurance from people who know better than I. Thanks!

[Andy2Participant]

Hi. Oh, that awful sinking feeling! Actually I can’t think of any reason why your bias-T got hot. The internal bias T in your RSP will only supply 100ma before the safety cutout operates, which isn’t enough to cook anything much.
There shouldn’t be any DC coming out of the external bias-T’s ‘radio’ port, it is DC blocked to stop any nastiness like this. So why did the bias-T get hot? The good news is your RSP and its bias-T seems OK.
The only reason I can think of for the heating-up is that perhaps you had a short across the loop’s connection. Obviously it’s not there now as it works. A mystery!

Andy.

[checksumParticipant]

Thanks very much! Things do seem to be working just fine now.

[Author]

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