To Carmelof: I have not decided on an antenna yet. Maybe a g5rv or a random wire cut for 80 meters. Do you have any other suggestions?
I know this was to Carmelof here, but I will chime in.
The G5RV is a compromise antenna primarily designed as a multiband transmit antenna. It is not particularly good as a receive antenna, or a transmit antenna, for that matter. If you have the room for a G5RV you have the room for several better receive antenna designs, such as a T2FD.
And a random wire cut for 80 meters would not be random on 80
But, an end fed random wire is a pretty decent starter antenna, if you can get some real length out there, say 60+ feet at a minimum, and 100+ preferable.
And to Token: Thank You for the detailed info. It will not be used in association with a Transmitter. I want it as a dedicated receiver only. I found a site i have been using sdr-radio.com. Many users have the SDR-IQ and the Ensemble II. They sound like very good receivers. And I have been going back and forth between the 2. The price and performance of the Ensemble II has me looking really hard at it. But I will be looking at some of the other Receiver suggestions you have made..Thank You for the write up I found it very informative.
If you have ever used the “Token/SWL” (Mojave Desert, California) node on SDR-Radio.com you have used one of my SDR-IQs, I generally keep my second one available on that network 24 hours a day. If you have ever used “Token, Mojave Desert” on the Perseus network that would be my Perseus, I generally keep it signed in on that network.
Many users (by that I mean node hosts, not the people listening to the radios) on SDR-Radio.com have the SoftRock and the SDR-IQ because those are among the lowest cost units that the SDR-Radio.com software supports. The NetSDR and the SDR-IP are better performers but several times the cost of the SDR-IQ, and more than 10 times the cost of the Ensemble, so you see fewer of them. The numbers on SDR-Radio.com are skewed toward the SDR-IQ and the SoftRocks by cost, not by performance. And in my case, for example, am I going to put my best radio on the network 24/7 for others to use? Or am I going to put a spare on the network and use my best one myself? Keep in mind, if you are using a radio on SDR-Radio.com the owner of the node cannot use it at the same time. Only one person at a time can use the radios, either the owner or one remote listener. We put our radios on SDR-Radio.com so others can use them, as a free service, and the node host (the radios owner) gets nothing out of it, other than knowing that others are enjoying the radio also.
Also remember all nodes on SDR-Radio.com are not equal. Just because they have the same SDR does not mean the local noise situation is the same or that the antennas are the same. A junk receiver connected to a great antenna will often perform better than an excellent receiver on a poor antenna.
Again I will say, I do not recommend the Ensemble II for a first receiver unless you like to tinker with stuff and know the shortcomings and pitfalls up front. I have seen more than one person discouraged out of listening, driven away from the hobby, by selecting one of the sound card based SDRs, like the Ensemble II, as their first or only receiver. The effort required in setting the unit up to work optimally, the search for a “best” sound card to support the unit, and similar issues end up exasperating some users. And the cost is not all that low once you get it done.
The Ensemble II might be low cost up front, under $60 for the kit, $85 if you get one assembled. But, you have to add a case and a power supply. This realistically pushes the price up to the $120+ range. And then many users (at a guess more than half) find that their existing sound card results in mediocre performance, or does not work with the SDR at all, and end up going after another sound card. Naturally, if you are going to do that you might want a good one, and figure that pushes another $100 or there abouts. So that you often end up with around $220 into something that looked like it was going to run about $60. And you still have to put up with the LO spike (and associated inability to use that region) in the middle of the sampled spectrum and the imaging issues that all sound card SDRs have to some level.
And then there are the settings issues. Sure, you can run it right out of the box with the auto detected audio levels and such. But to optimize performance with your specific hardware you will need to adjust levels, inputs and related, until you get just the right balance, this is more difficult than it would first seem. Some people never get there, and some are OK never optimizing, just running at defaults.
With all of that said, you will not find another $220 (or less) setup or radio that has the potential to work better. Just be aware it can be frustrating to some people, my above was not a bash on the Ensemble II, just a warning of the potential issues.
The SDR-IQ will work better than the Ensemble right out of the box, but at over twice the price. And it will work better, with regards to imaging and filtering, than the best optimized Ensemble II setup possible. And it does not care what soundcard you have, the sound card only makes the sound, it is not part of the processing in the SDR-IQ, the cheapest, built in, on motherboard audio is just fine…as long as your ears are OK with the audio quality.
However, I will also tell you the SDR-IQ is not a great receiver (I said that in my first post). Yes, it is decent, fairly good even, but not in the same class as what you can get in your stated price range.
With the G31DDC Excalibur I regularly, as in almost every time I set down at the radios, receive signals that the SDR-IQ cannot even detect out of the noise floor using the same antennas at the same location. The Excalibur has an advertised noise floor that is more than 10 dB below that of the advertised noise floor of the SDR-IQ. And in actual measurements I have conducted on the test bench the noise floor of the Excalibur is more than 12 dB lower than the SDR-IQ. The MDS of the Excalibur is also more than 10 dB below the SDR-IQ. This means, in real world use, a signal that is 6 to 10 dB above the noise floor of the Excalibur, and 100% copiable, is at or below the noise floor of the SDR-IQ and undetectable, or possibly not seen as more than just a vague “something might be there” signal.
The above means that the Excalibur user can detect and make usable low level signals the SDR-IQ user sometimes does not even know are present.
If you are in a high natural noise area, or an area of high RFI, this ability to detect low level signals may not matter. At lower frequencies it probably will not matter for many users, but in the upper half of the HF range it probably will. For higher level signals, things significantly out of the noise floor, there is no real performance advantage in the Excalibur over the SDR-IQ on any single given signal.
But, the SDR-IQ does not have the 0-30 MHz (or 0-50 MHz if you select that setting) wideband lower display. The ability to see short duration transient signals (such as most things that are not SW Broadcast stations) on this display is a huge advantage. In my opinion even if the Excalibur had no other performance advantage over the SDR-IQ this feature alone would be worth the cost delta between the two. Of course, if your primary interest is SW Broadcast stations or similar predictable transmission time/frequency stations then this is no real advantage at all.
Let me put it this way, a simple example from my position having used all of the hardware being discussed. If I had to replace my receive only equipment right now and I had to get only one SDR and it had to be $1000 or less, what would it be? The immediate answer, without hesitation, would be the G31DDC Excalibur. Is it the best radio ever made? Of course not, but it is the best radio I have tried that is currently available new for under $1000. If that was not possible for some reason the next answer would probably be the SDR-IQ. I would go to a traditional superheterodyne receiver like the Icom R-75 before I would go to the Softrock (or any sound card based SDR) as my primary and only radio. The Softrocks, in my opinion, are great second radios, or tinkering devices. Maybe even every radio listener should have one, try one out, but it should not be the primary tool.
T!