SDRplay Community Forum

>I can get lots of HAMs ...there should be hundreds..right ?

That's hard to say with any certainty. Bands can open and close by the minute, and not every ham is on the air all the time.

You'd really have to swap receivers and see on which you can hear particular signals better with the same antenna to get a good feel for the RSP sensitivity. I did that with my Radio Shack DX-390 with my decent antenna and found the RSP pulled out signals clearly that the shortwave receiver had trouble with. There was more signal and less noise with the RSP.

Not long ago I did some comparisons with a ham friend. We were chatting via Skype, he at his place and me at mine, tuning the same signals at the same time. With my RSP1 I was able to hear all the HF signals he was - and then some. He's got a fair bit more effort into his antennas above his house than I do (I just have a single long wire EF-SWL).

Some anecdotes: Right now I'm picking up WWV on 25 MHz at signal level S8 (with occasional dips to S6) with an SNR of around 16 dB. It's a nice clear signal given the 2 kW broadcast power from over 2500 miles away to my place in Florida. I think I only ever heard WWV on 25 MHz once or twice EVER from here with my portable shortwave receiver.

Depending on your antenna of course, you can expect to see/hear quite a lot with an SDRplay RSP. It is a serious, sensitive radio, and the audio quality (with SDRuno) is quite good (I was listening to FM stereo all day yesterday while working).

-Noel

Thanks Noel - I am also in Florida and guessing we have an advantage with flat terrain and lots of Ocean for waves to bounce in.

I am impressed with WMV at 25 mhz
that really shows a lot of sensitivity.

I just got a faint but readable Voice of America in English at about 2 PM which turned out to be from South Africa on 15580 but very rare for me to hear anything up there- I am using just longwire Internal Antennas clipped to whip and to Ext Jack- so O can switch back and forth .

But it sounds like that is a very sensitive Rig you are using-and of course you can listen to VHF etc .

Does that work well on a decent laptop ?

Does that work well on a decent laptop ?

I can't tell you that from personal experience. I have a very powerful dual Xeon workstation (I am a software engineer). This machine doesn't break a sweat showing numbers like 3% to 4% utilization to run SDRuno.

-Noel

robertkoa wrote: So I may try SDR first for Android my Phone has hi end Audio and Converters...if I really like it...may use a Computer ( I use my Android like a Computer now - not thrilled about using a Mouse..lol)

As far as I'm aware, there is only one program available for Android which works with the SDRPlay RSPx. It is called SDR Touch and I personally didn't really like it because I found tuning to be difficult by touch, and also it lacks many of the features, capabilities and refinements of its Windows counterparts. But perhaps this will change in time.

I don't think that you will realize full benefit from your SDR radio unless you use programs such as HDSDR, SDR Console, SDRuno, et al....