SDRs and HF digital decoding

[ka3jjz]

Recently a member was asking me about getting a program working with his SDR. As it turns out there are quite a number of YouTube videos that demonstrate that it can be done. In particular the SDRPlay site has many such videos, and even a few instructional ones. After a bit of digging, here's the list I found, and it has been added to our Digital Decoding FAQ....

https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/SDRs_and_Digital_Decoding

In general, you would need to send your SDR audio thru an app like Virtual Audio Cable to port it to your decoder of choice. Interestingly, MultiPSK comes up time and time again. But there are others, and these are mentioned in the above article, with links to articles in the preamble.

And as always, for a list of decodeable targets, see this article, also from our Digital Decoding FAQ

https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Testing_Your_New_Setup

Hopefully this list will help out some of you with using your SDRs for decoding ALE, HFDL and other modes....Mike

 

[spongella]

Agree 100% OM. Pipe the audio via Virtual Audio Cable.

MultiPSK is one of the best decoders for digital stuff. Recommend to buy the registered version of MultiPSK, bought one a few years ago for a $40 lifetime fee, well worth it because it gives you more options on some of the commercial digital modes.

FLDigi is another good one, I prefer this for FAX decoding,. For RTTY I prefer MTTY. In short there's lots of free decoding software to choose from.

Best to read up on each mode type first.

 

[ka3jjz]

Sadly there's very little Baudot RTTY out there any more, apart from ham use. Modes in use these days are a bit more complex than that. The Digital Decoding document has a lot of information on this and many other modes, but it barely scratches the surface. The appendix has links to a great deal more...Mike