HF on SDR?

[poltergeisty]

Do they make a SDR that can tune the HF bands?

 

[mancow]

List of software-defined radios - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[poltergeisty]

Wow! A lot of those are expensive except the Realtek RTL2832U DVB-T tuner, but looks like it needs some mod.

 

[mancow]

I have one of these and it works amazingly well. They are much cheaper on ebay. It will give you seamless coverage from a few kHz to about 1.7 GHz when used with a dongle.

NooElec - Ham It Up v1.2 - RF Upconverter For Software Defined Radio - Software Defined Radio

 

[ka3jjz]

Hardly true. The AFEDRI and Cross Country models will cost around USD300 apiece, and both do HF. And so will the Funcube Dongle Pro (if you can find one). We're not talking the Perseus here....

We have reviews of several SDRs (and one dedicated to using the Funcube on HF) in our SDR wiki

Mike

 

[poltergeisty]

I have one of these and it works amazingly well. They are much cheaper on ebay. It will give you seamless coverage from a few kHz to about 1.7 GHz when used with a dongle.

NooElec - Ham It Up v1.2 - RF Upconverter For Software Defined Radio - Software Defined Radio

So how does that work? Do you plug the SDR into the USB input on the up convertor? I see it has two RF antenna jacks. Why do you need two?

 

[N0IU]

So how does that work? Do you plug the SDR into the USB input on the up convertor? I see it has two RF antenna jacks. Why do you need two?

Yes, you plug the dongle into a USB port on your PC. Because the HF band is outside of the range of the dongle's receiver, you need an upconverter. One jack on the upconverter goes to the antenna port on the dongle and the other jack on the upconverter is where you plug in the antenna for receiving HF.

Clear as mud, eh?

This may answer some of your questions: http://www.hamradioscience.com/ham-it-up-hf-converter/

 

[Boatanchor]

The FuncubeDonglePro+ is a great way to dip your toes into SDR

OK, it's not as cheap as a TV tuner dongle, but by the time you buy a half decent Up-converter for your RTL stick, the price differential is somewhat less and the RTL/Upconverter combo will not work anywhere near as good as the FCDP+ because the FCDP+ has dedicated bandpass filters for the various bands, lower noise floor, a TCXO reference crystal for high frequency stability etc etc etc...