The Chinese receiver are becoming good value for money. But they have their performance quirks.
If you really want just a receiver get the following.
Airspy HF+ Discovery. It just plugs into your laptop and uses a endless of freeware controlling software. A cheap chinese receiver cannot match the Airspy HF discovery. This would be my first pick and its what I have used for years for weather fax. The beauty about the SDR radio is that there are endless plugins for things like weather fax and grib files.
airspy.com/airspy-hf-discovery/If you want spend a bit more another unit that I have kicking around which is one of the ultimate receivers money can buy. This is the Kiwi SDR box that plugs into the laptop with a Ethernet port.
You can try before you buy and even try weather fax on this link. Its the same interface as if you operate it from your pc. Its really fantastic. Dont buy the crap copy product off the auctions sites, its garbage.
kiwisdr.com/public/Just pick a location close to home or anywhere in the world and you can listen to all of the HF spectrum. Its free forever. What it means if you do have internet and you can hear a station you are calling or there is noise, you can select a receiver close to the station you want to receive and use one of the online receivers to get around noise, jamming or poor propagation. And unlike satellite services it never fails.
If you want to invest for something that gives you an emergency backup. Just buy a ham transceiver like the Yaesu FT891 or Icom IC7300. Its not illegal to use them on marine bands in an emergency. The modifications are online to enable transmit on the marine bands.
My frank view is that if you are buying the above better units you might as well buy new ham radio transceiver. And thats my advice, either buy the Airspy HF discovery or go buy a ham radio transceiver like FT891.
A reliable supplier among many.
www.vkradio.com.au/product-page/yaesu-ft-891-100w-hf-6m-mobile-1099If 1329 dollars is over your budget then thge KiwiSDR is highly recommended since you need no software for things like weather fax. You basically log onto the unit with a web browser via the IP server and you in. It essentially means you are not tied to software or a particular platform like apple, windows or android. Linux or any browser with a ethernet cable will allow connection without having to use setup or install software. Play around on with the online Kiwisdrs and you will soon get the hang of it.
HF radio and shortwave is one of the most dependent communications services in the world. Despite all the naysers in the sailing community who have become hostile to HF technology including the Sydney to Hobart dropping the requirement for HF radio, they should stop and think about why the international airline industry still use HF radio to this very day with satellite as a backup. The everyday routing is still done on HF because its cheap and effective.
When you get your shortwave receiver tune to 5643 or 8867mhz USB and listen to the South Pacific Air traffic routing that occurs every hour of the day. Its basically Brisbane, Auckland and San Francisco that controls the whole of the Pacific area. Its a perfect example of how when you choose the correct frequency how you can hear half of the world 12 hours in a day and simply changing to another 1 frequency you can hear the rest of world for the other 12 hours. Then you have listen to the endless internet traffic by yachties who dont want to take a few minutes in their day to learn HF radio properly and understand how you can get 24/7 coverage by just understanding propagation and correct frequency selection.
