Automatic antenna selection?

[xanderphillipsParticipant]

Sorry for the newbie questions, I’m 100% new to SDR, with only some very very basic knowledge of radio theory. I apologize in advance for any wrong terms I use or ID10T assumptions I may have.

I don’t currently have an SDR, as I returned the RTL-SDR unit I originally purchased on Amazon because it was misbehaving.

I’m thinking of picking up an RSPdx. I don’t currently have any antennas setup. I’m mostly interested in receiving, not transmitting.

My first question is: Can the SDRUno software automatically toggle between various signal input paths dependent on what part of the RF spectrum I’m selecting in the tuning window or is that a manual step?

For example, if I were to have multiple SDRs, each hooked to different band antennas, or in the case of the RSPdx different antennas on each of the 3 inputs, can it automatically toggle to the correct source when I click around in the tuning window or do I need to flip the inputs manually as I move around the dial?

My second question is more hardware related.
I want to receive as much freq. range as I can on a limited budget. I believe from what I’ve read the past few days that the RTL-SDR’s to do a much better job using an upconverter than using the direct sampling hack. With an upconverter wouldn’t I still need to also swap antennas in addition to flipping the upconverter on and off? I’m guessing that is a selling point in favor of the RSPdx, that I could hook multiple antennas up and not have to move cables?

As is obvious I’m a complete newbie. Am I overthinking the whole multiple antennas thing in the first place? It it likely that I might be able to use one ‘middle of the road’ antenna and pick up ‘fairly well’ the whole range, and having multiple antennas is a more advanced setup to squeeze more performance out of a system?

Is there a particularly good set of youtube videos you’d suggest to help get me up to speed?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Xanderphillips

[Author]

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