At the meeting today several of us Amateur Radio people found an inexpensive 25MHz-1700MHz software defined radio receiver an extremely cool development. This wasn’t possible at this price in a consumer product until recently.
We meet at Bobby G’s Pizzeria on the second and fourth Sundays of each month from Noon to 3PM in Berkeley near the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Bobby G’s is on University Ave near Shattuck Ave. We hope you join us, join the discussion on our email list and/or join us in #berkeleylug on freenode.net by following the tabs at the top.
Very cool! Also saw this at this past Sunday’ Meetup.
IMHO, it would be even geater if future inexpensive SDR receiver’s will include the lower 1.6MHz-40MHz frequencies (and higher wavelengths) of shortwave radio; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortwave_radio
One could even make an inexpensive DIY shortwave broomstick antenna — http://www.hard-core-dx.com/nordicdx/antenna/special/bromstik.html — and hook this up to such a SDR receiver w/ shortwave reception. Such a SDR-receiver set up with a broomstick antenna could perform just as well as $100+ Grundig/Sony/Sangean SW receivers, and for much less of a cost!
Oh, and as an extra DIY project to work with [hopefully] upcoming inexpensive SW SDR receivers and the DIY broomstick antenna, there is also eHow’s How to Build a Shortwave Antenna Tuner http://www.ehow.com/how_7916226_build-shortwave-antenna-tuner.html
Just imagine the possibilities with such a full SW getup!
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Cyberspectrum