my Hallicrafter sort wave for my news. Radio Netherlands, Radio Moscow, Radio Havana Cuba, BBC, VOA. That is where I learned about our corporate news.

SWL with SDR is the way to go these days!

You could team up an SDR with your Kenwood by adding an IF tap. Then you could visualize the IF bandpass using the SDR and also use it to receive. Those older kenwood radios are quite decent but adding an SDR to them makes a quite usable setup. You probably could use a cheap softrock one band SDR. Which would not cost much at all. Or you could use an RTLSDR in direct sampling mode. or just by itself. It depends on the IF frequency. I am sure you can find that info in a few minutes on Google.

Use the word "panadapter" "IF tap" bla bla bla.

and is 30kHz - 60MHz so it has everything I want. Too many rightwing nuts on ham for me to ever get on the nets any more. Ham radio never seemed to appeal to Liberals for some reason.

But I often hear people I think I would be able to chat with.

Its so cool to be able to talk to people all around the world.

Ive wanted to do that ever since i was a kid.

the equipment is too expensive. WHEN I do it i will probably start out with a QRP rig and build my own PA.

Ive been meaning to do that for a long time.

That is what most people do and then get their General and buy a used Kenwood/Yaesu etc HF radio.

Again that is the way I started also.

a 'dock" maybe?

5 watts is okay if you have a decent antenna. (maybe a j-pole made out of 300 ohm twinlead hung in the attic would work.)

They normally go through repeaters on tall towers. But are mainly local. You can go online and look up ham repeaters.

I just keep my HT (handy talky) charged up and use an external antenna and use a 50w mobile when out and about.

However if you want distant like foreign, then the HF 1.5 mhz to 30 mhz radio with single side band would be the way to go. A lot of guys work QRP (low power) for the heck of it. People have been know to work the world on CW (morse code) with QRP as CW really does not require that much power, just a good receiver. A lot of people are using the digital modes like PSK31 which also need very little power.

I just want to be able to do other stuff and wear a headset with a mike and maybe use a foot pedal for PTT so my hands are free to use the computer.

then the question becomes- do i want to talk to my local hams- Sure- why not, they seem like nice guys from what I hear of them. Seems like the hobby is a lot less popular now than in the past. Which is kind of sad.

For VHF/UHF 5 watts is likely fine, esp. with a three or four element coathanger Yagi. just would like to be able to get to know my local radio geeks.

HF and digital modes seems fairly interesting too.

I like building radio stuff.

its amazing what you can do with SMT. Much easier to DIY now than in the past.

The hermes lite looks quite affordable.. its a 12 bit SDR based on the Be-micro SDK FPGA dev board.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/hermes-lite

Seems likely very easy to do and adds a lot of value.

stuff can be changed or views from a computer. It is a nice mobile/base radio.



http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/hamhf/0480.html

program so you could click to tune in both directions with a softrock and perhaps also wit an RTLSDR? (dont know for sure on that, definitely you could with a softrock).

you might find the receive on a softrock is as good or better as your kenwood, if you have a good audio card (24 bits, very low SN)

Another direction i have been thinking about is the Hermes-Lite which is based on an Be-Micro Altera FPGA dev board - Its software comparable with the Hermes HPSDR software tools.

I am on Linux so most windows software is out for me. One nice thing about SDR is that in many cases you can put your station somewhere and operate from your laptop over wifi

In the living room, at the kitchen table, or even sitting in your bed with your SO, pets, etc.

That sounds great!

Kenwood had all that software for free on their website. I have thought about getting one of those SDR things, a lot of the guys where I used to work were playing with SDR. Since I retired and a little bit before, I just want things to work without a lot of hassle.

I had been on Linux on a lot of things since slackware 0.0.13 and the 4 floppy disk method. I got a Mac Mini to play with writing some software for my iPhone and found out it was BSD, I was hooked and never looked back. I had been wanting a good desktop for Linux for so long and here was the best desk top with real Unix also. I felt at home.

thanks!!

I usually pay around $7-12 . I have given a lot of them away as presents.

I like the (white or sometimes black) mid sized one with the IEC/PAL connector (not the MCX connector which wears out fast)

It has a curved row of holes on it and on the side it has written in blue or silver text "DVB+DAB+FM"

Ive had very good luck with that specific model. No need to spend more money than that. In fact because this specific model has some electrical advantages over the more popular model 9in my opinion) its a better value.

this model lends itself to a lot of hobby project fun.

They have a nifty little square PCB that you can remove from all the plastic and incorporate into other devices as a complete SDR IF stage. All four corners of the PCB are at ground potential.

its tiny, only around the size of a postage stamp. So you can incorporate them into some task specific device like the feed for a DIY hydrogen line radio telescope - typically then you would use an active USB extension.

A search on Youtube on "RTL2832" will show that they can become the core of hundreds of great science projects for kids or adults.

thanks again.