Re: [PLUG] Software defined radio

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 7:15 PM Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri May 17, 2019 at 7:05 PM Steve Litt wrote:
>
>  I guess I'm weird, but I much prefer receiving distant stations to
> > transmitting. Right now I have a shortwave regen I built
> > from a kit. It's good, but not that good. Someday I'd like to build an
> > SDR (Software defined radio) setup, but to save time and money I'd like
> > to follow in somebody else's footsteps.
>
> RTL-SDR dongles can be pretty cheap. You need the dongle, an upconverter
> (for listening to low frequency transmissions like the ones you're
> after), and an antenna.

RTL-SDR is obviously cheap.

If you're looking for something a bit nicer, the SDRPlay receivers are
MUCH better, and they have ones that can do HF directly.

The only thing I've had issues with is that the broadcast filters on
them aren't really good enough and on the lower bands I get a lot of
images of AM stations.  That might be a result of having a nice big
antenna - I have an 80m 1/2wave dipole, which is probably a much
better antenna than most people would feed into something like this.
I suspect the RTL-SDR would have similar issues but I haven't tried
one of those on HF.

Definitely check out that option since I'm not sure how much it costs
for the upconverters - the combination might put you into the price
range of the SDRPlay.

You can use the SDRPlay with all the usual linux radio software, but
the windows software it comes with is much nicer.  It will still do
everything an RTL-SDR will though on Linux - there just aren't any
options like SDRUno on linux.

-- 
Rich
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