I haven't jumped on the SDR bandwagon yet, and most of my reasons are the same as mentioned by Russ. Unless you are exceptionally affluent, it's hard to justify spending that kind of money on a hobby activity. Aside from that, there is the apprehension that having an SDR could become a huge time waster.
Like Russ, I make extensive use of timed recording. Virtually every day, I record the periods around TOH from just before sunset until at least an hour after sunrise. When reviewing the recordings, I listen from a minute before each TOH until just after TOH, and if it sounds promising, I do further listening, especially in the period where stations typically come out of a news break. Just to do a reasonably thorough job of reviewing one day's worth of recordings takes a considerable amount of time, and that's for a single tuned frequency. If I had an SDR recording that covers 100+ channels, I can imagine the temptation to check one more, and another after that, and maybe just one more... before you know it, you've run out of hours in the day, and neglected other important things that you should be doing. In short, too much of a good thing. Sure, you just need to exercise some self- discipline to avoid slipping into this trap, and we all know how easy that is. :-) I think SDR's are perfect for expeditions to special listening locations where you want to make the most of the limited time available, but for routine monitoring, having that full band recording capability is a bit scary! Lastly, with 2300+ stations logged from this location, I've heard all the easy ones, and many of the not-so-easy ones. These days, I'm usually going after a specific target, which involves careful phasing to null out a pest on a given channel. This applies to timed recording as well as live listening. Since this setup applies to a specific channel, having the capability to record many channels at once wouldn't really be much of an asset. Having said all that, I can still think of a few instances where having an SDR would be nice. The main one would be when there is some very unusual propagation happening, which can bring in some new stations without the use of phasing. This is especially true of auroral events, which have been exceedingly rare in recent years, but likely will become somewhat more frequent as we head towards the next sunspot peak. The next time one happens, I'll probably be kicking myself for not having an SDR to make the most of the event. The SDR would also be useful for GY hunting, to grab all 6 GY channels at once... but again, there's that time element involved in checking the recordings. Anyway, that's how I see it. In the long run, though, I'm sure that resistance is futile! Barry -- Barry McLarnon VE3JF Ottawa, ON _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
