Hacker News Reader

Comment by lloydatkinson | Hacker News Reader

I occasionally get a long wire between buildings and listen to shortwave and bands. Sometime I’d like to get a HackRF and try out SDR and GNU Radio.

View on HN

HackRF isn't the only way to go. There are other projects like T41-EP that can give you a really nice software defined platform as well.

Check it out here: https://www.4sqrp.com/T41main.php

(hint: you know it's a group of hams as soon as you see the colored fonts and grey background)

yeah you can also get an RTL-SDR for like $30 USD (or something) and listen to a pretty wide range of frequencies - definitely good enough to get started with a very small cost.

Not for shortwave. They don’t work below 50Mhz

Rtl-sdr blog v3 has a direct sampling mode that will get you into the single-digit mhz.

I assume that the v4 does as well. The earlier versions apparently also have this mode but it requires opening the devices up and a bit of soldering here and there.

I have an RTL-SDR and an upconverter. Pretty nice setup if you don't need the ability to transmit.

They do indeed, with the RTL-SDR Blog V3 and "direct sampling" mode! I think it's the only one at that price point that you can directly listen to HF/shortwave.

I have a couple of the super cheap ones I got for like $12 years back. With a simple mod you can get direct sampling and listen to any frequency. Works great.

The best radio for shortwave is without any doubt the Belka. It costs around 200€, but the quality is fantastic. The new versions cover also LW/MW and have an IQ output, so you can use as SDR as well. Otherwise you can find some Chinese clones of SDR play that are really cheap, but I am not suggesting those from a ethical standpoint

Reply on news.ycombinator.com