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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

SDR: The Next Level of Shortwave Radio Listening

 
Example of an AirSpy SDR Screen Capture 

Where have these things been all my life?

By James Careless
Published: August 5, 2024 - Updated: August 26, 2024

There is a new breed of RF receivers known as software-defined radios, and they are revolutionizing the way in which people listen to shortwave (SW) radio, or indeed any form of radio broadcast. 

SDRs combine plug-in radio receiver dongles/boxes with personal computers, with the computer serving as the user interface. What makes this interface so useful is that the listener’s screen displays a wide swath of the bandwidth being tuned to, with each station’s signal shown as a visual vertical line that moves and grows/shrinks with its signal strength. 

In other words, the listener can literally see what is happening across the band in real time, rather than having to turn the dial or push the Up/Down scanning buttons on a conventional shortwave radio, checking one station at a time.

Read  more on How SDRs Work, plus additional article at: