Nooelec NESDR Smart HF Bundle: 100kHz-1.7GHz Software Defined Radio Set for HF/UHF/VHF Including RTL-SDR, Assembled Ham It Up Upconverter, Balun, Adapters

This is a great piece of tech and I have barely scratched the surface in its capabilities. It was purchased to be able to listen to FT8 transmissions. In the future it will be used in many ways I can not imagine yet. Please note that a great deal of learning is needed to truly get this thing working how you need it too. Also the infinite levels of tweaking will kill a mere mortal.First off I would like to point out that after I purchased this I received an email from the seller outlining that the drivers are very important. Thank you to the seller! Follow their directions and it is pretty painless, as long as you are familiar with software installation. If not then Youtube is your friend. This is the first time a vender has warned me ahead of getting their product. The CubicSDR software that they ask you to use, I did not like, but it works. May be fine for you. So far I have settled on using AirSpy SDR, it pipes the audio to a Virtual Cable software and it then sends it to WSJT-X. Just search this on Youtube if you are interested. It seams to display everything I am wanting. Waiting on my cables to hook up my radio. Stinking covid...I watched a pile of video's and read what I could find before I got this. If there is a better one for the cost, I did not find it. There are more expensive ones that will transmit as well.Now I want to call out the guy that said you could use 75 ohm TV coax when you are listening only... Well if you tweak it for about 10 hours, sure you can hear something. Maybe even get some FT8 through it. But no you will not like it at all. I'm no rocket surgeon, but I can tell you what I see.The Ham It Up converter that I received requires a -125,000,000 Shift to be put into the SDR software. It is important, at least in AirSpy that the offset has comma's in it. Even though it shows dots in the menu. This was close to an hour of Googling.This guy does run hot! So far it has not given out. But I place it where it can get as much air as possible.Lessons I learned the hard way:Extend your USB cable before you use a length of cable between the SDR and your antenna. I found that if I had a 16 foot of "China Best RG-58u" in the mix, I received no signals that could be processed for FT8 and mostly noise. The cables and adapters just produced to much loss i guess? The connectors that I received are good. Use a meter to test the ones you get, just to be sure. Cables that you buy need tested as well.The antenna's that you get, make sure you know which one to use. Bigger is not always better. Look online for an antenna calculator and plug in the frequency you want to hear and it will give you the 1/4 wave length, then setup your antenna accordingly. Look up this kit on youtube and see how to configure the balun for longwire and dipole antennas. This is the only antenna that has worked for me. The others are for wave lengths I'm not interested in yet.One antenna will not do everything.I did try using this on a Raspberry Pi 3b+ and a Pi 4 2 gig and I found that the cpu was not enough to get rid of clipping in the audio. Pi's are great, but not for this in my mind. The software was running the cpu's at 100%.I now run it on a Windows 10, i7 . Nothing is lost and it runs at 20% cpu.

I really enjoy this. If you've been playing on websdr.org and thinking about getting your own do it. Not just listening but building antennas. It all feels solid and well built.

The build quality and finish is clean and professional, conveying confidence in the product. Installation and set-up (including software installation on a mac) was straightforward, problem-free and quick. There is a fairly comprehensive set of accessories included in the kit, though the user will need a USB cable to power the 'Ham it Up' module. It is also a good idea to get a short USB patch cable to avoid plugging the 'NESDR Smart' unit directly in to a USB socket (the USB-A to USB-C / thunderbolt 3 converter for a MacBook Pro is just the job). This reduces mechanical loads on the connection - the module is compact but quite heavy.The cubicSDR software is almost intuitive to run and the features that it provides (especially the spectral displays) are powerful assets for short-wave listening. Setting up for short-wave work with the frequency offset is easy, but it might be better clarified that there is an upper limit to the frequency range:To go to the higher VHF/UHF ranges it is necessary not only to select 'passthrough', but also to set the frequency offset to zero.And finally, the provided antennas perform very well, even indoors. I find that the simple telescopic antenna performs just about as well as a 10m long wire hung outdoors.

No issues, have controlled this from both a Raspberry Pi and a NUC. Depending on what you are doing, I would recommend going with something beefier than a Raspberry Pi. The SDR is solidly built.

This is a BARGAIN! Ive had so much fun playing with this SDR. Some Caveats, follow the emailed instructions to the letter. The instructions for the driver loading software are incorrect. They say the device will show up as NE SDR.... it does not... it shows up as Bulk Device.... the instructions tell you the address of the device which does show up correctly. Once the driver was loaded I loaded the software and have had a blast with it.... no its not a Flex Radio... but it is a well built little sdr thst you can shove in your laptop bag so you have a radio with you on business trips... the Ham it upconverter is great too. One thing the description is wrong about saying NE SDR covers 100 khz to 1.7 GHz...this is incorrect. NE SDR natively covers 25 MHz to 1.7 GHz. You need to use the upconverter to receive below 25 MHz. You also need to put a -125 Mhz offset in the SDR software. Once you do you can receive HF Ham Stuff and shortwave.This is really a good deal. Highly recommended!

I read a lot of the reviews on Amazon about this bundle so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I thought the Ham It Up might be useless. Not the case. After a couple of days of tinkering and research I got the upconvertor up and running and was even able to do some lightweight DXing using the included telescoping antenna. Be sure to set the Shift in your software to -125,000,000. Don't forget the minus sign like I did. For me, reducing the sample rate also helped. This really is a great product and the possibilities are endless as to the neat things you can do with SDR.Update:For those having trouble with the Ham It Up, this may be obvious to some, but frequencies below 14 MHz (20m HAM band) are best received at night. During the daytime you have a good chance of getting transmissions above 14 MHz. Also, I have tried using the Ham It Up in Windows 10 with SDR# and Kali Linux with SDR++. By far, the Kali setup works the best. I don't think you necessarily need the Kali Distro, that is just my setup. I will admit that the time investment needed to get this bundle operational is higher but if you do the research and don't give up the payoff is great.