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Comment by TKinNC | Hacker News Reader

There is a glaring error at the beginning of this article under the "things you cannot do with SDR."

"Listening in on the conversations of Ham operators."

In the US at least, there are many VHF/UHF Ham bands easily received by SDR. I use an Airspy on Mac OS X, and although the software is terrible, there is plenty to listen to.

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I was thinking / wondering the same. Many new HAM operators get handheld radios that use the 144MHz (2 meter) and 440MHz (70 cm) bands. Both of these seem to be within range of this device. You can also build a dipole antenna for these frequencies for a few dollars. That would allow many of us to listen to repeaters in our local area. RepeaterBook.com (or the mobile app) is a good resource for listing repeaters near you.

I haven't had time to write much detail about this but here's an antenna I built recently. A quick google search will bring up dozens of other designs.

https://www.joeldare.com/topics/amateur-radio/#gift-card-dip...

Maybe they were thinking HF (High Frequency), which is what's used for long distance/international contacts and what many people think when they think "ham radio". AFAIK the USB stick receivers can't receive HF. But that's a hardware limitation, not SDR limitation. There exist SDRs that can do HF, they just don't cost $15.

Actually the latest RTL-SDR has a software switch for direct sampling. Which isn't great quality, but with an indoor wire antenna in the basement (!) I received JT65 transmissions from 47 states in the course of a few evenings. Hawaii, Vermont, and Alaska are the ones I missed. However, I did hear Hawaii... On SSB!!

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