Topband: Remote receiver deafness. Was: New Modes, Systems, etc

[Michael Walker]

On and off I have had a Web SDR available to some.

To back up with Vince is saying, it is often on a 'left over antenna', or
mh HF6V.  Good enough for 40 and up and certainly not good enough for 80 or
160M.

This is what you are seeing with these.

Mike va3mw


On Sat, Jan 11, 2020 at 7:56 PM DXer <hfdxmonitor at gmail.com> wrote:

> I had private correspondence about this, so here is additional information.
>
> Some of these remote receivers do have 'bad' antennas, others not so.
> For 'local' reception, one does not need much.
>
> I have an AirSpy HF+ SDR with a 'bad' Mini-Whip antenna in the backyard,
> at only 4 meters above the ground. It's performance is good enough to
> receive LW broadcasting stations from Europe, and North Africa. But they
> use MegaWatts, you say? Fair enough, but it's around 200 kHz.
>
> Enough MW stations in North America, located from 500-1000 km from my
> place. But they use KiloWatts, you say? Not all of them, lots of so
> called graveyard stations run much less than 1 kW, and the MW band is
> from 520 to 1,720 kHz.
>
> Navtex on 518 kHz, using around 1 kW of power. Finally, NDBs. These can
> use as little as 25 Watts from 120 to 300 kHz.
>
> These remote receivers are a problem for the integrity of the hobby,
> regardless of the antenna used.
>
> Funny enough, they are not 'automatically' good for cheating with FT8,
> due to latency issues, unless the SDR is a Perseus, but most aren't.
> They are usually Kiwi, AirSpy, RTL-SDR.
>
> 73 de Vince, VA3VF
>
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