Here is the station we are looking at/listening to . . .
Switched over to the wire antenna . . .
And here’s the loop antenna . . .
Do you remember the 3 most important rules of real estate – Location / Location / Location?? SWL ( Short Wave Listening ) has the same sorta thing – the 3 most important rules of SWL? Conditions / Conditions / Conditions . . . And this morning conditions were decent to good – at least around 15Mhz.
I changed no settings on the SDR software – simply switched between the 2 antennas, so to answer YOUR question – a properly set up random wire can and will give excellent performance – but the random wire is omnidirectional as long as you stay under a 100 feet or so – but there is no slewing the antenna side to side to reduce interference. Both antennas have Flamingo AM and FM filters from Nooelec / available here – they do make quite a difference – the reason I have separate sets for each antenna is to be able to compare either antenna with and without. If I put the filters after the switches I can only have them in line with or out of line with both antennas.
If you are not using some type of tuner with a wire antenna – to be able to change the capacitance and or inductance as to what the radio is “seeing” – then when dealing with poorer conditions or lower strength signals or both – then you are limited to increasing the gain by software – and up comes the noise floor along with the signal strength. And that is where a powered loop with a good LNA ( Low Noise Amplifier ) comes into it’s own. Just about every review I could find on the RF-PRO-1B rated it good – and a lot of that is because of the engineering and design that went into the LNA – it works very well pulling those low level signals out of the noise floor – and not raising the noise floor so high that you still have a chance at hearing them.
Still in the middle of a battle with HDSDR software on windows – I have gotten to the point where it’s getting scrubbed off the box and reinstalled – I will start fresh with it. The Pi4 just continues to impress me – I downloaded a Pi4 OS onto a fresh micro sd card ( still have my factory OS intact ) that has SDR++ already set up on it – so I went ahead and installed CubicSDR software on it and promptly trashed the audio – oops. The audio still works for YouTube and everything else – just won’t work for either SDR program . . .
If nothing else I will re image the card and start over – no biggy . . . And of course now I’m lusting after a Pi5 to put together a 4 terabyte NAS – either like this / or like this – I’m just putting this out here – if some strange fate takes me – thoroughly check out my Blushing Bride – she watches all those true crime whodunnit channels and she has 2 spiral notebooks full of tips and tricks – just saying . . .
Have Fun! – Run the Gun! – and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!
Guns, Fun, Food and More 