Some advice needed before buying my first SDR

[White_Cat]

Dear friends,

I decided to write here because I have always been a dedicated SW radio listener ever since my childhood. Having read a lot of wonderful things about the capabilities of SDRs, I am strongly interested in buying my first SDR and SW antenna, so as to be able to start playing around. I would mainly like to focus in the frequency zone below 30MHz and the signals I am primarily interested in are DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) broadcasts, such as the one provided by the BBC on 3955KHz in the morning. (Although a friend of mine once happened to own a DRM receiver, hardly did he manage to decode even the strongest DRM transmissions. I would like you to share any of your DRM decoding experiences).
I would be really grateful to anyone who could suggest a good SDR/Antenna combination, that will not be as expensive as a WinRadio receiver for example.
From what I know, SDR devices come usually in the form of USB sticks which are connected externaly. However, I consider internal hardware to be far more convenient in general, due to the fact that I am very short of space on my desk. So, please let me know if there are any SDRs currently on the market that come in the form of a PCI or a PCI-e card. I will also need a decent high gain SW antenna that is as compact as possible.

Thank you very much for reading this post,
Best regards to you all from Greece where I live,
With a friendly meooooow,
A humble white domestic cat
(You can have a look at my avatar for more details...)

 

[a417]

Well, if you've already googled it...you'll see that Winradio (and the like) are up in the hundreds to thousands of US$ price range. The dongles you seem to hate are <$20.

They are about the size of a pack of chewing gum, they can be placed on an active USB cable for extension from the immediate area, and can be hidden anywhere. There is absolutely no reason for you to have it sitting plugged into your USB hub for everyone to see.

A RTL SDR and a up-converter can be had for about $60 bucks, so you can try before you buy that expensive and sometimes awkward to deal with PCIe card.

You will have to run an antenna to the PCIe card anyways, so you'll have a cable routed away from your computer...so if you put the RTL SDR on the end of an active USB cable, and route it smartly - you instantly distance yourself from the RF HELL That is the inside of a modern PC case.

 

[ka3jjz]

SDR 'sticks' are fine - and there are others besides the RTL-SDR with the built in converter - but for a bit more money you can get something that performs a good deal better. Many folks like the Funcube, but there are LOTS more SDRs that cover the SW spectrum - and this article from our wiki outlines many of them...

SDRs with HF Coverage - The RadioReference Wiki

(Anything blue, both here and in our wiki, is a link)

As you can see, several of them have dedicated mailing lists - and don't think that this article, and the ones linked to it, are at all completely up to date. The SDR scene is changing rapidly, but the little 'book' that I put together is a pretty good place to start. The PCI-card based radios are, sadly, pretty much long gone.

Now as to antennas - living in Athens, you are at the doorway to many rather strong broadcasters, so 'high gain' is really not what you want here. To do so would invite issues with overloading, among other things. What you do need would be dependent on how much room you have available to you, and whether you know how to solder and build connections. If you have the space, the PAR line of antennas (requires about 14m of space, but there are other possible configurations...) would be an excellent choice to start. There are many other designs, but you should look for coax fed antennas that would limit the amount of RF junk being picked up by the lead in (including any PC based noise).

Again our wiki comes to the rescue - and keep in mind that this is just a start on a selection - there are so many possible designs - again, depending on how much space you have to work with - that only 1 little page hardly scratches the surface, but it's a start..

HF Antennas - The RadioReference Wiki

I think you have some homework ahead of you. Finally we have 2 forums here that are, in turn, dedicated to SDRs and HF antennas. Feel free to post questions on those topics there..

Software Defined Radio - The RadioReference.com Forums

Receive Antennas (below 30MHz) - The RadioReference.com Forums

Mike