New To SDR

[Thermionic]

I only discovered WebSDR a couple of days before last Christmas. What brought it to my attention was when I was looking for the sounds and interval signals I used to hear when I was much more active in SWL than I have been lately. I clicked on a link, which turned out to be the Twente WebSDR. I thought what the hell is all this, it didn't take me long to find out what I was looking at.

I've been on the Internet since 2004. I see the Twente SDR came on line in 2008 and was reactivated in July 2012 after an interruption of more than 1.5 years. I can't believe it's taken me until now to discover not only Twente, but other SDRs.

What I first noticed about shortwave radio is how much it has changed since I last listened to it nearly 30 years ago. In my days of SWL there were was no such thing as STANAG, now it's all over the place.  Then there's the waterfall, this was something new to me. I must tell you when I went to bed on the night when I found Twente, all I ever dreamed about was that waterfall.

The second SDR I found was NA5B, which as most of you know is in Washington DC. Back in the days when I used to listen I had a brief flirtation with medium wave DXing and found the odd America and Canadian station on that band. Thanks to NA5B I now have the ability to listen to American AM stations on Medium Wave.   

As there are no broadcasting stations on the long wave band in the North American countries, being a resident of the UK I've often wondered what it sounds like from across the Atlantic. The only station I've heard is Radio Algeria on 252kHz. It's weak, but you can detect audio from it. Moving to 198kHZ which is used by BBC Radio 4, there is a line on the waterfall and a very, very weak carrier wave. One night I could just detect some barely perceptible audio.

It was through the Twente SDR that I found this forum through a link someone had posted in the chatbox.

[Stretchyman]

Welcome!

There's a few UK folk on here!

TWENTE is amazing, just shows what you can do.

Barely worth getting your own but I suggest you do!

All the Best from Bris.

Stretchy.

[Josh]

Welcome, on the STANAG, it's always been there, you just called it rtty. There was also its more redundant cousin, vft, if you remember that nice buzzsaw sound.
https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/BR-6028

[Thermionic]

Welcome, on the STANAG, it's always been there, you just called it rtty. There was also its more redundant cousin, vft, if you remember that nice buzzsaw sound.
https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/BR-6028

Now I never knew that. As I haven't done much SWL for quite sometime, when I found SDR, I thought what's happened to all the RTTY stations I used to hear, now I know.

[NJQA]

As there are no broadcasting stations on the long wave band in the North American countries, being a resident of the UK I've often wondered what it sounds like from across the Atlantic. The only station I've heard is Radio Algeria on 252kHz. It's weak, but you can detect audio from it. Moving to 198kHZ which is used by BBC Radio 4, there is a line on the waterfall and a very, very weak carrier wave. One night I could just detect some barely perceptible audio.

During the winter months, I often hear the European LW stations, sometimes well enough that I use them for background music while I work on other things.