Blackcap Blog

Published at 21:02 on 9 October 2015

Why buy yet another radio? Two reasons:

1. I’m currently trying to do noise mitigation in the HF bands, and that means walking around the neighborhood with a radio. While I can use one of my existing sets for this purpose, they tend to be very awkward, as they are all desktop models.
2. I’m also interested in helping friends whose homes might be bugged (seriously; they’re known as activists, and the government has a nasty record of surveillance on such individuals) do some searching for bugs. It’s yet another something for which a small, battery-powered radio is a useful tool.

So I wanted a small, battery-powered wideband receiver that could tune as many frequencies as possible in as many modulation modes as possible. The latter is an important point; most of the wideband receivers out there (such as the Icom R6) can’t receive SSB or CW at all, which is a major limitation on the shortwave bands.

First impressions:

1. It doesn’t feel super solid and professional, like I’d imagine the Icom R20 (discontinued) or the AOR 8200 (no raw I/Q output) to feel. It doesn’t feel super-fragile either; its plastic case does feel quite rugged and right. But there’s very little metal in the thing; it’s surprisingly lightweight.
2. It’s very complex, and the manual isn’t the best in explaining the complexity. It can take some searching and experimentation to figure out how to do something.
3. It won’t put my desktop HF receivers out of work; it’s significantly less sensitive than them, not so easy to use, and tuning SSB signals is somewhat painful.
4. Notwithstanding the above, it does actually work acceptably on MF (aka AM broadcast) HF, VHF, and UHF signals. Given its small size and wide coverage range, its performance is quite remarkable.
5. Forget about using the rubber duck antenna it was shipped with for HF; get an SMA-mount whip (thankfully I already have one).
6. It comes with a rechargable lithium-ion battery and a drop-in charger. The latter was a pleasant surprise; I much prefer drop-in chargers to plug-in ones, and I was expecting the latter, given the price.

This is the USA, so mine is the crippled DX-X11T model with the stupid government-mandated gaps in the 800 MHz band (fuck you very much, Congress). I seriously entertained the idea of taking a trip to Canada and smuggling a non-crippled one across the border, but:

1. That involves blowing most of a weekend.
2. There’s always the (slight) risk of my purchase getting confiscated on the way back.
3. I already have a desktop receiver capable of tuning such frequencies (completely legally; I bought it before the law became effective so it’s grandfathered).
4. I also have an RTL2832 dongle on order which, together with a free software program, will be a software-defined radio that goes from about 24 to 1700 MHz with no such gaps.
5. If I do find a bug, I’d rather do so with a 100% legal receiving device, to minimize the very real risk of governmental retribution should I be open to it by possessing contraband.