[mmaunder]

Guys, no one is forcing you to listen to that stuff. Get off the voice bands, get on digital and you'll have a blast.

Here's a fun talk at Defcon from Balint Seeber, a ham who focuses on security, to get you in the right headspace. I attended this and the group of 6 of us that hung out afterwards with Balint was some of the most impressive people I've met at Defcon. One had built a bug sniffer. Another was intercepting satellite comms over Iraq. And Balint had a prototype SDR board he shared with us. So much fun.

https://youtu.be/cHtHBqSZE4k

Yes, there is a community of rag chewers who use the voice bands, especially lower HF, to keep in touch with friends. That's a tiny part of the hobby and community.

[ChuckMcM]

Exactly this.

Too many people get funneled into this trap by the ARRL who understandably push "get on the air today!" type articles which haven't been updated since the 80's and have people getting HF radios and hunting for repeaters on the 2M band. And the grumpy old guys who are pissed off it isn't the 80's (or 70's or 50's, few seem to be nostalgic for the 60's) anymore.

In the digital radio space its a lot more open, and just being able to work with radio has become pretty easy these days. I've got a bunch of SDRs now, and I agree the ADALM-PLUTO ($100) is the most cost effective way to get a nice xmit and receive SDR. The RSP2 from SDRPlay is another one that is good for the low bands through 2G (its like $200) then the next step up is the HackRF-1 ($300) or LimeSDR ($300) or LimeSDR Mini ($170). Above that you start getting into the Ettus/National USRP radios ($3000 and up).

Small WHSPR (whisper) radios like the article mentions are inexpensive to build and fun to play with as well, not a lot of chatting but tagging beacons and getting tagged. Or putting lightweight radios in a balloon and flying it around the world (https://www.mchsarc.com/?page_id=13)

[StudentStuff]

Those grumpy guys pervade the web too, in some places when I talk about OpenWRT I'll get mobbed by people that view it as evil, linking it to dead forks of the early 2000s that were popular for blasting RF. These same people love to hate on the GPL, over squabbles that happened decades ago. Highlighting that GPLv3 fixes the permanent license revocation loophole of GPLv2 goes in one ear and out another with 'em.

When I point out the dozens of watts some HAMs are blasting in part of the 5Ghz band, these same asshats are all over that shit. It makes me want to have zero involvement with this toxic community, since many active members can't handle basic logic.

For now I'll stick to the ISM bands, Part 15 is good for many applications.

[sliken]

I've searched this space looking for a decent RX/TX SDR that does a few watts. It's surprisingly hard. Seems like the 5 watt $30 HTs (that are SDR based) are extremely common, but as soon as you add any flexibility it's $1000s.

[ChuckMcM]

Those two constraints are easily separated. Radio and separate power amplifier. You will find that a really wide band power amp is expensive so a lot of people will have two to five PAs and an RF switch to select between them

[franciscrick1]

See also http://www.picospace.net/, or http://www.leobodnar.com/balloons/.

[vvanders]

I love the digital stuff, definitely an awesome space.

Another great group is Summits On The Air[1] which basically involves hauling a radio up to the highest peaks and seeing how many people you can contact from the top of the mountain.

It's something you can do with just a simple 5w VHF handheld(yay line-of-sight) and the group is really welcoming. Last weekend I was up at about 6k ft and making direct line of sight contacts over 100mi away on 5 watts.

[1] https://sota.org.uk/

[mmaunder]

Oooh that's a tough one. I haven't been in the market for a while, but even used gear like the Kenwood TS2000 which is now about 18 years old is still pricey. And a Yaesu FT817ND which is a low power HF radio comes in at around 800 bucks.

I really would like to hear from others, but I would look at getting an SDR that can handle HF frequencies down to at least 7Mhz if you want to have some serious DX fun.

I have a HackRF One, but it retails still at around $300 bucks. I have a feeling if you use the google and shop around, you may find a SDR and converter combo that'll get you down to 7Mhz with low power.

Then building your own antenna is trivial. Because you're using very low power, you can actually build a dipole antenna that doesn't even need a balun. I've used stealth antenna wire which is super slinky and nice to work with to create a low power antenna (in ham speak, we call low power 'QRP'). It's basically just coax that splits the core and shield into left and right branches. You use the stealth wire for the branches and you calculate the length based on frequency. So it's locked to a specific frequency like the 7Mhz band. But they're super effective as long as you string them in a tree. The whole kit can be bundled up into a backpack, taken for a hike and when you get to your destination, have a picnic, string up the antenna in a tree and make a few DX (long distance) QRP (low power) contacts on your laptop. Yeah, it's a geeky hobby. [insert joke about preparing for the end times]

But again, I'd love to hear from other hams on here re developments in low power low cost HF SDRs.

[scarhill]

I use the RS-HFIQ, a 5 watt 80-10 meter SDR transceiver[1]. If you don't want to mess with sound card configuration you can add the Pi SDR[2] which adds an Orange Pi and sound card to give you an ethernet-connected radio.

[1] - https://hobbypcb.com/rs-hfiq [2] - https://www.pi-sdr.net/pi-sdr/index.php/pi-sdr-projects/pi-s...

[silman]

So what lower-cost radio do you recommend to get started on non-voice bands? I see the bitX40 people made a new model called the µBITX. What bands and protocols will that open me up to? I also looked at the RTL-SDR but thats receive only and i'd like to do some transmitting and explore my options. Basically just looking for a cheap option that lets me explore the most bands/protocols.

[crankylinuxuser]

I'm not parent/GP...

I bought a ADALM-PLUTO from Arrow. $98 shipped. It's a SDR that goes from 325MHz-3.8GHz, and with a "hack" will go from 70 MHz to 6GHz. 7dBm (or 5 mW Tx).

You'll need amplifiers to go from 5mW to QRP (~1W). I did find one on Banggood for 1MHz-1GHz with up to 35dBm gain. I'll still need one for 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz, but that's a small price to pay for having nearly 6GHz of spectrum to read. ( https://www.banggood.com/1MHz-1000MHZ-35DB-3W-HF-VHF-UHF-FM-... )

[bitcoinmoney]

I also have an amateur license. How much is the cost to go to non voice band for starters??

[crankylinuxuser]

I'm not entirely sure I can competently answer that.

I know with my ADALM-PLUTO hardware, it can receive from 70MHz to 6GHz, but at only 5mW. So if you want to start Tx-ing, you'll need a low noise amplifier for the band you want to transmit. Also, the antennas are for 325MHz-3.8GHz and are anemic stubby 1dBi. You will want better antennas. Ideally, for the respective bands you want to do stuff with.

I'm still piecing my software together. Right now in open-source land, there's lots of individual decoders and some encoders. I'm having good luck with SDRangel for handling Tx as well - there's some weirdness with encoding data for Tx with the plugins. But that's just growing pains of this being new.

The other problem you'll have, if you just don't pony up kilobucks for "ham radio hardware", is that going from 7dBm (5mW) to 30dBm (1w) is going to be weirdly expensive. And then that only gets you to 'QRP'. You'll then need a second stage amp to go from 1w to higher power.

If you do EME digital modes, you're amping up from 5mW to 1.5KW . $$$$$$$$ lies here. But I'm sure if you talk in freenode IRC in ##hamradio , there are EME hams there.

So to better answer your question, rather than give you a bunch of options, here's a general idea of cost breakdown:

Cost = laptop + ADALM-PLUTO (or relevant SDR for HF) + 30 dBi amplifier for band you want + antennas for band you want

My laptop is $500 and is Dell precision m4800. 4 cores/8 threads, 32GB ram. $500 from ebay. ADALM-PLUTO is $98 shipped from Arrow. I bought 2 1.35GHz-9.5GHz antennas for $13 each from Banggood. I'm looking for a 7dBm->20dBm 2.4GHz amplifier That would bring me up to 100mW output. I also bought a random assortment of SMA connectors for $12

That would leave my current total at $136 for the wireless hardware, or $636 if you want a dedicated laptop. RasPis won't work with SDRangel - it eats CPU for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

https://www.banggood.com/1_35GHz-9_5GHz-UWB-Ultra-Wideband-L...

https://www.banggood.com/18pcs-1_2G-5_8G-FPV-Telemetry-Anten...