HF+ and HF+ Discovery, shortwave to 260 MHz
Airspy HF+
Shortwave with no upconverter, and VHF to 260 MHz, on a receiver built for a crowded band. For FT8, DRM, weather fax, RTTY and Morse.
The HF+ family covers 0.5 kHz to 31 MHz and 60 to 260 MHz with a front end designed for the one thing a dongle is worst at: a weak station a few kilohertz from a strong one. Its span is narrow, well under a megahertz, which is a whole amateur band or a broadcast band rather than a slice of the spectrum.
That is exactly what the HF decoders want. FT8 and FT4 read off the HF dials with grid squares on the map, DRM services and their labels, weather fax charts drawn on the video pane, RTTY and Morse as text, and AM, SSB and CW with the noise blanker, noise reduction and auto notch doing their work.
Like the other Airspys it is driven by WaveShark’s own USB driver, with no libairspyhf, in the desktop build and in the browser.
What it reaches
- FT8 and FT4, DRM, weather fax, RTTY and Morse on shortwave
- AM and SSB listening with a front end that holds up
- Airband, marine VHF, the 2 m band and APRS
- NOAA APT passes at 137 MHz
What it will not do
- Anything above 260 MHz: no 433 MHz sensors, no ADS-B
- Wideband protocols, since the span is under a megahertz
- Transmitting anything
Setup
On Linux the airspyhf package brings the udev rules. Nothing else is needed.
Which radio for which job?
The use cases say what each one is for, from a device survey on a dongle to drone Remote ID on a HackRF.
Read the use cases