Hey there fellow tech geek peeps…
Well for some reason I had no clue about SDR (software defined radio). I must have been under a rock somewhere or something. I am a heavy PC user and do some coding, websites, flow processing, and system configs kinda guy. Getting back into radio and now finding out that I can program and use radio through my PC… WOW! I am about to go deeper into Geekville.
So what is this SDR I speak of, well in my words, basically you can add a SDR dongle device or usb connected SDR device to your laptop with an antenna. In my case I bought 2 SDR devices (HackRF One and RTL-SDR Blog V3 so I can tx and rx using my laptop. I also went head got the Portapack for the HackRF to mobilize in the field and a Ham It Up Plus – HF/MF/LF/VLF/ULF Upconverter to expand the bands. This should all be arriving soon and I suspect that I will be very sleepy for several days after many late nights. Ha!Once these things arrive, I should be able to setup my laptop pretty quick with some SDR software to tweak and tune as if it was a mechanical / equipment setup but with far more flexibility in decoding and other stuff. Pretty darn cool all the way around in my opinion. Some of the SDR software I found but haven’t tried so far include HDSDR, SDRAngel, and SDRSharp. From first glance, I am leaning towards SDRAngel 1st during my self-education of SDR RX then paired with SDRSharp for TX / RX.
So, in summary… here I go again, venturing off in the unknown at least for me and in parallel working towards my General Class FCC license so I’m all legal like in some additional bands.
73’s
KC5GFD