Finally – a look at the Airspy HF+ Discovery – one of the best SDR’s out there for the money – SWL FREQUENCY RANGE – 0.5Khz to 31Mhz / vhf coverage 64Mhz to 260Mhz / FM Broadcast BAND 64Mhz – 118Mhz / VHF Aviation Band 118Mhz to 280Mhz.
The primary coverage freq’s for SWL – 0.5khz to 31mhz drops you right on top of the “traditional” shortwave receiver coverage. If you think of it as a general coverage SWL radio such as a grundig 800 or say a Realistic DX160, you would not be far off the mark. But it does has some real advantages over a more traditional “shortwave radio”.
Here is my Realistic DX160 which I still use to this day.(eton 750 on top)
Short Wave Listening was/is a labor of love – years ago you would creep through the frequencies on different bands – adjusting antenna trim and slowly fine tuning a possible signal – it could literally take an hour (or longer) to get that signal. And for the true addicts among us it was actual good times. (and the old 160 still looks good today!)
That has changed some here and now. The SDR’s have pretty much shifted it to visual cue – you see a water fall display – and there is your signal type – if your received signals are above a given point you can hear them – mode switching is a simple mouse click away.
Switch from am to fm? Point and click – Volume/squelch/gain? – point and click. No scratchy potentiometers – no dirty switches – none of that! Everything is through software. In this case – SDR++ – which is a free download by the way. And you are not limited to just that program – there exists a bunch of programs out there – SDR++ running on windows is what I happen to prefer for the Airspy HF+ Discovery.
Here you are looking at the entire AM broadcast band – all of it at once – listening at this time – 0933UTC – to WLS Chicago / 890 AM / Red Eye Radio – off of the 28.5 foot vertical – an excellent antenna put together specifically for AM / FM broadcast band reception. SWL on the Airspy is good stuff – again the big advantage of the SDR radios is the ability to see that waterfall display and the tune right to it.
The Airspy is inexpensive enough (plus or minus $200 USD) and so far outperforms the “dongles” out there it is almost an impulse buy, and it’s a great entry level SDR – again I stress – the performance level is approaching more expensive SDR radios.
I really need to figure out this YouTube thing – it’s far easier to show the performance and the difference in performance versus “dongles” with a video. The prices in this video are from 5 years ago – so there’s that.
There is a tremendous number of videos out there on the Airspy – I could type until my fingers wear out and you would get a better understanding of the radio from 2 or 3 videos – and in less time than it would take reading all that mess – I really need to look into this YouTube stuff.
Found this next one and thought I would toss it in here – I still creep through the AM band – especially in the daytime – small market radio is fun to listen to . . .
The Airspy HF+ Discovery – worth it? If you want to do SWL on a more than casual basis? It is a good value/performance balance – keeping in mind it’s only as good as the antenna you’re using. That’s the reason I set up to be able to switch between 5 antennas – depending on conditions and frequency – I can usually get decent reception on one (or more) of them.
Despite what some folks will tell you – there is no one given antenna that is “the best” for SWL – the closest I have run across is the DX Engineering RF-PRO-1B® Active Magnetic Loop Antenna (click on it to see it)
If there was ever a true example of a “buy once / cry once” item this is pretty much it.
You can interchange gun / antenna / radio for me and it pretty much works – LOL!
Have Fun! – Run the Gun! and remember – Fish Heads are Cheap!!
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