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Reviews For: AIRSPY HF+ Discovery

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

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Review Summary For : AIRSPY HF+ Discovery
Reviews: 7MSRP:
Description:
Building on the field-proven Airspy HF+ architecture, we designed the Most Refined HF/VHF SDR with world class performance in the smallest form factor.

The Airspy HF+ Discovery sets a new standard in terms of reception performance with extra pre-selectors for all the supported bands and a New DSP Core to optimize the gain distribution and the filtering parameters in real-time and dig deeper in the noise.
Product is in production
More Info: http://airspy.com/airspy-hf-discovery/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1574
BLUBBY Rating: 2023-01-16
superior VLF, LF, MW,and SW receiver Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The HF+Discovery is often praised as good for the money. This is not exactly true. It's actually very good regardless of the price paid.
It is not perfect. It is a mostly silicon radio and I have found that common mode filters are essential for extracting maximum performance in my RF intensive environment. I use 77 mix toroids to filter the USB connection as well as the antenna connection. Since I installed them I discovered incredible performance from 1kc to 30mc. I have SDR# but I prefer the interface and waterfall of SDR Console. I am running the latest version of both currently.
The Airspy is an excellent sigint receiver. Great for the ham bands and finding utilities too. It beats everything else in the shack on LW and VLF and I have some excellent gear in that regard. It easily bests my Drake R8A, My Icom R8500, and my Itt Mackay marine 3031A and JRC NRD-515.
It is the only downside of buying one. Get ready for a small black plastic rectangle to waste your other gear. It was not easy to accept.
On the upside, enjoy hearing stuff you did not even know was there. A fantastic radio that must have a clean USB connection to your PC and relevant filters if AM BCB stations are strong where you are.

Highly recommended. It runs hot. I use a big heatsink to keep mine cool. Keep it cool and be assured you have an excellent receiver...no matter the cost.
G0FYD Rating: 2022-06-19
Great value for money. Top class receiver Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Great receiver for serious MW/LW dxers
Fabulous performance on Band 2 FM
Hooked up to my Wellbrook ALA100LN and 45ft loop it performs flawlessly across the whole SW spectrum
Next step is to hook it up to my 2M beam and masthead
I am confident it will be great judging from the 2m ft8 decodes using a vertical
N2DTS Rating: 2021-07-09
very good for the money! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I can not find much wrong with it, it works much better on HF then anything in its price range, much better then the sdr play radios.

Preamp off on the low bands, a good usb cable and a quiet computer give great results.
I could not see much difference between it and the flex 5000, or the 6400M, or the Anan, and its better then the ICOM 7600.
Dynamic range seems great with no odd AGC effects.

I can not find any spurs or birdies, the radio will pick up stations even connected into a dummy load.

I use sdr sharp which has some very nice features but not quite the best for ham radio use.

This is by far the best RX in the sub $300.00 price range (Its $165.00) and bests receivers costing much more.

Its also VERY small (thin).



VE7RVS Rating: 2021-03-07
Many spurs Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Bought this Discovery in Dec '19. It appears sensitive enough on HF. There are however many mysterious spurious signals, many fat fuzzy and wobbly, high levels, in the device output, with many inside ham bands (was planning to use it in a panadapter!). These spurs were present even if the input has a 50 Ohm termination. Requesting an exchange, I gave several complete symptom reports to distributor and provided many screenshots in several emails, after the last one they told me, "we are still trying to figure out where those are coming from", but have not heard from them again. They suggested trying a good USB cable with the device. Tried a double foil shielded USB cable and operating the device 5 meters away from the PC with a good quality extension USB cable and the described signals were still as observed. One time there was a power outage in my neighborhood, and using a laptop with the device I still observed these spurious signals in the spectrum. Am very disappointed in this purchase. Originally planned to get an RSPdx, but read a couple of glowing, apparently hyped reviews and tried this product instead.
K4MLB Rating: 2020-06-30
Works Ok, not my favorite SDR Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Lightweight, delicate construction
Porous warranty
Slow customer service
Average performance

Mine failed in about a week.
They claimed it was due to ESD and my fault.

It was replaced at no charge after a substantial delay.
NF6M Rating: 2020-05-01
Competent and fun little receiver Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Okay, first, what the HF+ Discovery is not - it is not a replacement for a $5000 rig with tight dual-conversion receiver, super tight ham-band-only bandpass filters, and razor sharp 2nd-IF crystal filters. It just isn't. But it isn't meant to be.

If you just hook it straight up to your full wave 160m loop or 80m dipole and you live anywhere near strong broadcast stations, you'll likely pick up a lot of junk from AM broadcast stations that show up as spurs every few kHz across some bands. I found that by adding a homebrew AM BC band filter in line with my antenna I could get rid of most of those. With a big antenna, you may also need to add some in-line attenuation to prevent overloading. These things are both true of pretty much ANY SDR receiver.

Also, if you hook Discovery up to a computer that is not well shielded, or you use poor quality USB cables, you may also pick up a lot of computer noise. That may be the HF+ Discovery's biggest problem - that you have to direct-connect it to a computer to decode the signals. Computers are now designed with little or no thought to RFI and shielding (doesn't seem like the FCC cares whether cheap stuff from overseas generates interference or not, as long as they get their paychecks), and computers generate a lot of signals at radio frequencies. If those signals from inside the computer travel as RF down the outside of the USB cable shield, they'll go straight into your HF+ Discovery as if they came in via the antenna. So if you have lots of wavy looking signals when far away from anything but your computer, get a pretty long high-quality USB cable, and try winding many turns around a ferrite choke core. You might find it helps a lot.

I've enjoyed using both the HF+ and the HF+ Discovery a lot. I don't see a huge difference between them. There are now some bandpass filters added in the Discovery, and they will help in some situations, but you still have to be VERY vigilant about keeping strong overloading signals and noise sources out of ALL your potential signal paths (antenna, coax shield, the USB cable, and USB cable shield).

The HF+ Discovery is a very competent HF SDR receiver with good selectivity and sensitivity. I haven't had any issues listening to weak signals with loud SSB or broadcast stations nearby. If the nearby signal is clean and not directly within your filter width passband, the Discovery can usually take it right out.

A lot of discussion about features will depend on which software you use. The two programs I'm familiar with are SDR#, supplied free by Airspy, and Simon Brown's SDR Console, also available for free download. Both are very nice programs. Some features of SDR# are a little harder to figure out, as there is no manual or online help. I find the controls for some options, such as custom IF DSP Noise Reduction, to be tricky to figure out, as nothing really explains what they do. If you keep playing at it though, you can often get rid of white noise on signals almost completely, for great armchair copy. SDR Console is very nice software also and both it and SDR# work great with the HF+ Discovery out of the box, without having to load any custom drivers.

I've heard of a lot of ham rigs in recent years that were bought and then SOLD again a few months later at a loss of hundreds of dollars. This rig is probably just about as FUN as many of those to use, and it costs less than $200, and for that price is arguably one of if not the best receiver in that price class, better than many older HF radios, and way better than any other inexpensive portable HF receiver I've tried.

I do agree with what some have noted about the case/construction of HF+ Discovery though - the new plastic case feels fragile, and I don't see any way to open it up to re-solder anything that might break loose inside, like you could with the original HF+, which felt very sturdy by comparison. I also wouldn't want to sit on the Discovery if left in a back pocket - as the case feels like it might crack.

Things I wish it had:
-6 Meter band coverage - gets skipped in the frequency ranges for some reason.
-BNC antenna connector - the tiny SMA connectors are just a pain to interface to everything I use with HF.
-Some sort of optical or RF USB isolation device, to keep out all but the signals that the receiver needs without additional RF garbage.

For what this little receiver is though, it is terrific. I pack it up with my laptop these days for a little "social distancing" (still in my back yard) along with AirSpy's new portable YouLoop antenna, and I can pick up all sorts of cool stuff, from AM/FM broadcast bands, HF, Shortwave, and 2-meters, from my lawn chair. It is super fun and capable for the price, and with a little extra filtering added, even not too bad on your big antennas. Don't shoot it for what it isn't.
WD8BP Rating: 2019-09-26
Excellent,quiet sensitive good value SDR receiver Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have had many SDR receivers over the years and some were good some were ok some were horrible and some really nice. This model falls into the really nice radio. Simple. Easy install. Plug into your pc, drivers loaded at first install. Many different software can be used. Very low noise floor. Does not clip under high RF signal locations. My qth has many TV stations and many radio's will overload easy, however this radio does not. No need to turn on the att.function. Good value,easy to use, sounds great, low noise floor is really nice! Very pleased. 73 Mike