Radio Listening

I have had an interest in radio for many years. As I do not hold an Amateur Radio license, this is mainly in the form of Radio Listening.

I have a number of radios that allow me to listen to various parts of the radio spectrum.

Dedicated Radios

Icom IC-R5

The Icom IC-R5 is a "Compact Wideband Handheld Receiver" also known as a "scanner". The radio can scan through many pre-programmed frequencies looking for activity. I have used this listening to the Air Band (aircraft / airfield communications), Marine Band (ship to ship and ship to shore communications), Amateur VHF / UHF bands and many others.

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Sihuadon D-808

The Sihuadon D-808 is a "FM / SW / MW / LW / SSB / AIR / RDS Multi Band Portable Digital Radio". I use this for general listening and particularly Shortwave Listening

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Quansheng UV-K5 8

The Quansheng UV-K5 8 is designed to be an Amateur Radio VHF/UHF transceiver. However, with some programming, it can also be used a wide-ish band receiver. The firmware that I used for this is Egzumer. As a non-license holder I have to be sure not to transmit and so have programmed all of the memories to be receive only. To easily program the memory channels I used the CHIRP software.

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Software Defined Radio (SDR)

Wikipedia defines software-defined radio as "a radio communication system where components that conventionally have been implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a computer or embedded system. While the concept of SDR is not new, the rapidly evolving capabilities of digital electronics render practical many processes which were once only theoretically possible".

I have two SDR setups; one that can only be used with a computer and one that can operate stand-alone

RTL-SDR

The RTL-SDR is "is a very cheap (~$30) USB dongle that can be used as a computer based radio scanner for receiving live radio signals in your area". The origin of DTL-SDR was from mass produced DVB-T TV tuner dongles that were based on the RTL2832U chipset. With the combined efforts of Antti Palosaari, Eric Fry and Osmocom (in particular Steve Markgraf) it was found that the raw I/Q data on the RTL2832U chipset could be accessed directly, which allowed the DVB-T TV tuner to be converted into a wideband software defined radio via a custom software driver developed by Steve Markgraf".

The RTL-SDR require software running on a computer in order to operate. There are software applications available for various operating systems such as SDR#, SDR++, GNU Radio and many, many others. For a comprehensive list see The BIG List of RTL-SDR Supported Software.

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HackRF

The HackRF is an SDR board originally created by Great Scott Gadgets. It is available in many form factors including the HackRF One from Great Scott Gadgets which is intended to work connected to a computer in the same way as the RTL-SDR.

The other main form factor for HackRF is the "Portapack". This combines the HackRF with a custom PCB containing a micro-controller, display, switches, etc. that allow the HackRF to be used in a "stand-alone" way. The board runs custom firmware, such as Mayhem, to enable multiple receive and transmit modes over a wide range of frequencies.

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Conclusion

Radio Listening is a great hobby with many facets. I only wish that I had more time available to dedicate to learn more about it and actually listen to stuff!