RF Space has a good online presence, they have several mailing lists, and it is easy to get answers to questions. Pietr also hangs out from time to time on the various IRC channels.
I have experience with a few SDRs, I'll summarize them here:
netSDR from RF Space: This is my main "go to" SDR. I use it nightly for the SDR recordings I make of the 43 meter (6800-7000 kHz) band. I also use it for a lot of general purpose listening. As Token has said, it is a fabulous radio. Not cheap, but you cannot go wrong buying it. I recently installed the VHF/UHF converter, and have been pleasantly surprised with the results. I also have the 10 MHz reference input option, which I feed from a GPS derived reference. I did this primarily for the times I look at the dozens of carriers that are present on any MW channel, day or night, as they are closely spaced and all have their own drift patterns, which would be lost due to the normal drift of the A/D clock oscillator. This is certainly not an option the casual listener needs, but when you use a Cadillac SDR, you may as well go for the leather seats
I use the third party SdrDx software with the netSDR, as well as the SDR-14 below. This lets me run native on the Mac, and not have to deal with Windows in any way, shape, or form. There is a Windows version of SdrDdx as well, however, although I have never used it. It should be the same feature-wise as the Mac version. I'm in close contact with the SdrDx author, and he is continuously maintaining it. It works with the AFEDRI SDRs as well. He is open to adding support for other SDRs, providing they do not use a USB interface, or if they have a USB to networking adapter program available (such as for the SDR-14/IQ, or the one I wrote for RTL dongles).
SDR-14: This was my previous SDR. I can't even remember when I got it, probably shortly after they came out. I had a lot of fun with it, though it shows it's age in comparison to modern SDRs. A 14 bit A/D vs the 16 bit in the netSDR. No bandbass filters like the netSDR, so you do sometimes get images. The interface is USB not ethernet, which I really don't like. I am not sure why so many modern SDRs use USB. OK, I know why, it is a little cheaper. But it is a PITA to deal with drivers and such. C'mon folks, get with it, and use ethernet. OK, rant mode off. You can still find SDR-14s, as well as its cousin the SDR-IQ, on the used market. Are they worth it? Depends on the price. If you can get one cheap, and can't afford much more, perhaps. But if they are in the $250 range and up, you are likely better off buying something new for about the same price.
AFEDRI: I recently got a dual channel AFE822x SDR. My two reasons for getting this was first to play around with phasing and diversity reception (which sadly I have no had much time to do) as well as use it as a general purpose RF measurement/test tool (which I have done a little bit). I ended up replacing my SDR-14 with this, and use it for my nightly DGPS recordings, as well as looking at the 48m Europirate band, and other bands when the netSDR is busy recording 43m. It only has a 12 bit A/D, but it seems comparable to the SDR-14 in performance, with the added bonus that it samples up to 2 MHz, vs just 190 kHz for the SDR-14. Plus it has an ethernet interface, yay. (It also has a USB interface if you like living in the Stone Age) I'm generally happy with it, I think it offers a lot of value for the price. Alex, the owner of AFEDRI, is responsive both via direct email as well as on their mailing list. AFEDRI is located in Israel, shipping charges to the US are not too bad, I think I paid $24 for EMS shipping for mine, it arrived in a few days.
RTL Dongles: I've played around with these on VHF/UHF, I have two of them. They work great for decoding aircraft radar transponders at 1090 MHz, as well as general purpose listening. There's a huge, no, insane number of third party programs for them, for decoding all sorts of things. The performance/price ratio is huge, but mostly because the price is so cheap. They're what, $15 or so? Now, my experience is purely on VHF/UHF. While not an R-7000, they are great there, and if you do any VHF/UHF listening, you really should get one, if just to play around with.
I know there's a lot of converters out there to use them on HF, as well as mods to do direct sampling, etc. I have not used them myself this way, but from what I have read, as well as knowing a bit about how they work, I am not really sure there is much value here. There's a big difference between using an 8 bit SDR on VHF/UHF, and one on HF. Between the huge dynamic range differences in signals, overloading, images, etc.... I think you'll drive yourself crazy. If you really want to experiment with this, sure, knock yourself out. I suppose on an extremely low budget, it makes a nice spectrum display. But don't expect to use an RTL dongle as an HF DXing machine.
As Token said earlier, if you absolutely need to stay under $150 for an HF SDR, get an SDRPlay. But if you can spend a bit more, consider something a notch up from that.
Topic: Thinking of getting a SDR (Read 9548 times)
