Shortwave listening without a radio.

[dademoss]

Anyone interested in listening to a variety of shortwave radio stations should check out : https://sdr.hu/

It's fun to poke around and play with, and a lot cheaper than a good shortwave receiver.

 

[Flight]

Good find, thank you

 

[Weedygarden]

I have seen this before. Thank you for posting about it. I like that you can listen to channels all over the world. It is a great way to learn what is really happening in the world.

 

[Flight]

Weedy, yes you can, if you get a rtl-sdr dongle, get the proper software and a antenna, you can do it also

 

[Tacitus]

Tried three different links/stations. I got a lot of static on each of them.

 

[dademoss]

Yeah, it's not internet radio, it's not your local FM station, it's not Sirius XM. What you get is what that receiver can hear given the propagation etc.

 

[bkt]

SDR USB dongle for $21 plus an SMA to SO-239 adapter for $12 plus an SO-239 center insulator for $27 plus around 50' of speaker wire connected to the centercore pole of the insulator and strung horizontally. You will be able to bring in stations from very far away.

Install SDR# for Windows for free, plug in the USB dongle and you're set.

You don't really need to spend quite so much but this cuts down on fiddling around with getting a long random wire off the centercore of the USB dongle. This is the setup I had and it worked extremely well.

And it bears mentioning that even though a computer is required to listen to radio, the internet is NOT required.

 

[lonewolf]

how on earth do you listen without a radio? don't get it.

 

[Flight]

A sdr (software defined radio) with the proper software on your computer, will turn your computer into a radio. If you guys want more information on what a sdr dongle can do, go here https://www.rtl-sdr.com , it has lots of information on what can be achieved from what started out in life as a TV tuner.

 

[bkt]

how on earth do you listen without a radio? don't get it.

The SDR USB dongle (see my post above) is a radio receiver. The software running on your computer filters and enhances what that USB device receives so you can listen to specific frequencies using specific modes through your computer's speakers or headphones.

 

[lonewolf]

so you still need a computer to receive the signal, I see.
technology isn't my thing, you might have guessed that.

 

[SheepDog]

You need the computer to power the dongle and convert the radio frequency into audio frequency.
The dongle receives the radio but you can't hear radio so the computer is used to convert to audio.