so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly just scanning the local repeaters and doing some NOAA weather sat stuff with WXtoImg. works fine for that honestly. but ive been wanting to get into HF and actually listen to some shortwave, maybe poke around the 40m and 80m bands to get a feel for propagation before i even try transmitting.

someone at the club mentioned the RSP1B and it does look pretty solid on paper, the dynamic range is supposedly way better than the rtl dongle and it covers DC to 2GHz without needing a ham-it-up upconverter which i was about to buy anyway. but its like $120 and i dont know if im gonna get that much more out of it vs just slapping the upconverter on what i already have. im running SDR# on windows if that matters, though i did try SDRuno briefly and it felt kind of overwhelming at first.

anyone here actually gone through this comparison or been in this situation? is the noise floor difference noticeable enough on HF that its worth it or am i just gonna end up chasing my tail with antenna issues anyway

honestly the RTL with an upconverter will get you started but once you hear the difference on a crowded 40m band in the evening you'll understand why people move on from it. the intermod on those dongles is rough when there's strong BC stations around. i picked up an RSP1A a couple years back (before the B came out) and yeah, the dynamic range improvement on HF is real, not just spec sheet stuff. that said you're right that antennas will be your limiting factor for a long time. if you haven't dealt with a decent feedline and some kind of noise reduction setup the extra sensitivity might just mean you receive more noise more clearly, lol. SDRuno is a bit clunky but you get used to it, or just run the RSP through SDR# with the community plugin, works fine.

i went rtl -> hackrf and kind of wish i had done the rsp route instead for HF receive. the hackrf is great if you wanna transmit or do wideband stuff but receive sensitivity isn't its strong point, everyone knows that. for just listening on HF the rsp stuff makes more sense. also wxtoimg hasnt been updated in forever, have you tried Satdump? way better for the NOAA birds now