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Author Topic: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?  (Read 15202 times)

Offline ChrisSmolinski

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #15 on: January 18, 2013, 2154 UTC »
I regularly record the 43 meter band (6800-7000 kHz) overnight (and all day on weekends).  I'll play back the recordings in the morning, looking for things. This lets me pick up many transmissions that I would otherwise miss, especially very short ones. I still have a radio with knobs (NRD 545) that I use for general tuning around, although I find myself using it less and less.
Chris Smolinski
Westminster, MD
eQSLs appreciated! csmolinski@blackcatsystems.com
netSDR / AFE822x / AirSpy HF+ / KiwiSDR / 900 ft Horz skyloop / 500 ft NE beverage / 250 ft V Beam / 58 ft T2FD / 120 ft T2FD / 400 ft south beverage / 43m, 20m, 10m  dipoles / Crossed Parallel Loop / Discone in a tree

Offline IQ_imbalance

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #16 on: February 24, 2013, 0546 UTC »
How much HD space does a night of recording with the sdr-iq take up?
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Offline ChrisSmolinski

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #17 on: February 24, 2013, 1248 UTC »
How much HD space does a night of recording with the sdr-iq take up?


You can calculate the amount of storage:

First, what is the bandwidth? In my case 200 kHz. Note that the actual data rate is typically about 25% higher (check your SDR setup), it's 250 kHz for mine. So that means there's 256k sets of data written per second. The recording files are I/Q data, so there's two values written, and they are 16 bits, or two bytes each, so that's 4 bytes total. (Again, check your SDR setup, some write 24 bit data, which means 6 bytes per second). So doing the math, 256k * 4 = 1024k or 1 MB per second.

There's 3,600 seconds in an hour, so that's 3600MB or 3.6 GB an hour. A 12 hour recording is 43.2 GB, on weekends and holidays I usually run all day long.

The maximum data rate of the SDR-IQ is a little less (around 192 kHz from memory). Also, you can record a smaller segment of the band.

After buying an SDR, the next step is to buy another hard drive :-)  In my case I have an external 3 TB firewire drive. I keep recording files for a few weeks (in case I need to go back to check something), then start deleting them.
Chris Smolinski
Westminster, MD
eQSLs appreciated! csmolinski@blackcatsystems.com
netSDR / AFE822x / AirSpy HF+ / KiwiSDR / 900 ft Horz skyloop / 500 ft NE beverage / 250 ft V Beam / 58 ft T2FD / 120 ft T2FD / 400 ft south beverage / 43m, 20m, 10m  dipoles / Crossed Parallel Loop / Discone in a tree

Offline John Poet

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #18 on: February 24, 2013, 2001 UTC »
How many tubes does it have?!

I can't quite wrap my head around this stuff.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2013, 2008 UTC by John Poet »

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Offline Sealord

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #19 on: February 25, 2013, 1519 UTC »
Hey, even I'm outdated now days - I can only 'see' one frequency at a time!
Indoors: WR-G33DDC & TT RX-340_DX Eng. 4-Square Array / Outdoors: Belka-DX_Whip / Poolside: SMC HF-150_MMD-40 (D.O.G.) / Off Air/Studio Recordings

Offline Andrew Yoder

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #20 on: November 14, 2013, 0423 UTC »
Please QSL to: POB 109, BRS, PA 17214
Hobby Broadcasting Blog: http://hobbybroadcasting.blogspot.com/
Drake R8, AOR AR-7030, R-390A, R-388, SX-28A, Philco 44 + some others    Horizontal loops & 1/2-wave inverted V

Offline ihmeyers

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #21 on: November 30, 2013, 2331 UTC »
New to the board but not the hobby.  ;D

Agree with Token re Winradio Excalibur.  I have had one for about 3 years and have never had a radio pass through my shack that could best the Excalibur on weak signal retrieval.  Equal it sometimes, maybe but never beat it.  That includes Drake R-8, JRC-535, Icom R75, Yaesu FT-1000MP, Icom 756Pro3, Kenwood TS-940, Drake R7.  I'm not saying there aren't any out there that could (maybe a vintage Racal or WJ or a state-of-the-art transceiver) just that I haven't had one in my shack in the 3 years I have owned the Excalibur.  Now as far as audio goes, I have it running through a 31 band EQ into a pretty good Yamaha receiver and a very good soundcard.   My other hobby is high-end audio so I think I have a pretty good ear and believe I have gotten out most of the digital artifacts from the Excalibur.  That being said it's still sounds slightly digitally like an older generation CD player and not the equal of the best analog radios. 

73,
Ian
Boynton Beach, Florida  :)

Offline ByteBORG

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #22 on: February 23, 2014, 1817 UTC »
Just talked to Gerry at SSB Electronics this morning and they are running a special til the end of the month on Perseuses (Perseii, plural ???)

Get this... $949.00

nice price, eh ?
+ Always listening for that elusive RF...
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+ 73 & Good DX !!!
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Offline IQ_imbalance

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Re: What's a decent mid priced SDR for LW/MW/HF?
« Reply #23 on: April 06, 2014, 1448 UTC »
Way late to this party...but wondering what one could do with an array of $600 worth of $20 Rtl-sdrs.....(!)
LOG/NE-SW unterminated BOG/DJ-130/800Mhz Yagi
AFEDRI SDR-Net ICF-SC1 SDS-200 various RTL-SDR
Central MD