I was curious how the RTL-SDR v4 would perform against the IC-705 during one hour of FT8 receiving so I set up and did a little test. The setup:
- One hour RX on the 20 meter HF band FT8 section
- Antenna tuned random longwire
- HF signal was split according to the image below, but I did not use the first stage ”AMP” and no LNA from the RXout from the SDRSwitch.
- SDR software = SDR Console
- Same bandwidth was used in the IC-705 and SDR Console
- Two (2) instances of WSJT-X Improved running on the same PC, calibrated to the same RX dB level
- Both instances reporting to PskReporter
Result after one hour RX
Transmitters reported in PskReporter:
– IC-705: 323 transmitters
– RTL-SDR v4: 323 transmitters
Top distance IC-705:
Top distance RTL-SDR v4:
Distance chart IC-705:
Distance chart RTL-SDR v4:
WSJT-X view IC-705:
WSJT-X view RTL-SDR v4:
