Reply To: Another beginner questions on SDR

[Andy2Participant]

Just a brief reply. The basic modes on HF (short wave, 1.8 to 30 MHz) are AM, Upper Side Band, Lower Side Band and CW. These days most of the utility users have gone digital, and the best place for the basic modes are the amateur bands. To get to these easily, you can just use the ‘band’ buttons on the on-screen keypad. Pressing one of these will put you in the band and you cannot tune out of it. You will also need to select the correct mode and bandwidth to suit. Set the RF gain in the upper half of the range.
For USB and LSB. you need a step size of 100Hz or less to make the voices sound right. Watch out for glitches which might select a wrong step size – not sure if this bug is still present, it may have been fixed now. For bigger steps (to move around the band quickly) tune by hovering your mouse over the digit you wish to change and use the mouse wheel.
For the AM and lower HF bands, a ‘longwire’ antenna is a good start, connected to the BNC input. Beware local electrical noise from LED lighting and noisy PC’s and TV’s.
On VHF, utilities use FM (not wide FM) and step size depends on where you live – 10kHz and 20 kHz in the USA, 12.5 kHz and 25 kHz are most common. Analogue is dying out and digital modes are becoming more common. To decode with DSD, you need something called a ‘virtual audio cable’ to route the signal from the SDRUno software to the decoder or you won’t hear anything.
I can recommend joining the Facebook group. It’s very busy and there are lots of helpful people there. There’s a link on the main SDRPlay homepage.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by .