I was under the impression that the LMS8001 board would piggyback onto the crowdfunded LimeSDR board to bring its upper frequency range to 12 GHz. Is that wrong, i.e. will the 12 GHz version be a full replacement for the LimeSDR board v1.4 instead of being an upgrade accessory?
I am really interested, because I too have hopes of using the LimeSDR board for future AMSAT-NA satellites that will use 5 GHz uplink and 10 GHz downlink frequencies.
The good news is that if you are willing to only listen to the downlink frequency and not transmit on the 10 GHz band, an inexpensive satellite TV LNB that is PLL based will bring the downlink down to a frequency that the existing LimeSDR board will easily receive, and then you just have the issue of generating RF in the 5 GHz band. But I will also say that while I am willing to have a separate radio for satellite operation vs. terrestrial weak-signal operation, I’d love it if one radio would handle all the ham bands from 50 MHz to 10.5 GHz. Granted, such a radio would need a low noise preamp, input filtering, a power amplifier, and output filtering on each ham band you’d want to operate on, but I am already building such a system in my dreams at night, though not on my bench (YET).