This is crazy. The ones we used in the Navy were heavy and delicate. Now it fits into the palm of our hand. Just incredible how far things have come.
The cool thing about this one is that it’s open source and well documented.
There are a lot of downsides: The front end has poor input protection and the entire unit is much less resilient, calibrated, and trustworthy than what you’d use in the Navy.
Oh, and RTLsdr dongles are fantastic deals too, when coupled with the GNU Radio project.