So ive been messing with an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now and honestly its been great for learning but im starting to hit its limits, especially on HF where even with the direct sampling hack its kinda mediocre. Been looking at either stepping up to an SDRplay RSP1A or just going full HackRF and im not sure which direction makes more sense for what i want to do.

Mainly what i do is NOAA weather sat decoding (APT and a little HRPT when the setup cooperates), some airband stuff, poking at ACARS, and i want to get more into decoding utility stations on HF - like STANAG stuff and some of the weird digital modes you see on shortwave. I also want to eventually do some light transmit experiments, nothing serious, just playing with signal generation basically.

From what i can tell the RSP1A has way better receive performance, lower noise floor, better ADC, but you cant transmit. HackRF can do TX which is cool but the receive side is apparently kinda meh compared to RSP1A. Is that actually true in practice or is it one of those spec sheet things that doesnt matter much in the real world. Also does anyone actually use the HackRF TX for anything useful or is it mostly just people replaying captures and that kind of thing.

Running SDR# and GQRX depending on which machine im on, tried SDRuno a bit and it felt weird to me but maybe i need to give it more time.

The receive difference between RSP1A and HackRF is real, not just specs on paper. HackRF's noise figure is pretty rough, something like 8-10dB across a lot of the band, and the RSP1A is significantly better especially below 30MHz. If HF decoding is a priority i'd lean RSP1A without much hesitation. For the satellite stuff you're already doing it'd be a noticeable step up too.

That said the TX thing on HackRF is genuinely useful depending on what you're into. I've used mine for testing antenna stuff, feeding signal into dummy loads to check filter responses, and yeah some replay stuff for learning purposes. Its not a serious transmitter by any stretch but as a signal generator it earns its keep. If you mostly care about receive quality though the RSP1A just wins that comparison pretty clearly. You could always get the RSP1A now and grab a HackRF later if the TX itch gets bad enough, they're different enough tools that having both actually makes sense eventually.

honestly i went through the same decision like two years ago and ended up getting both over time which probably isnt the answer you want lol. but for what you're describing with the HF utility decoding the RSP1A is the right call first. STANAG decoding especially you want a clean signal and the RTL direct sampling path is just fighting you the whole time.

SDRuno is weird at first but once it clicks its actually pretty solid for the RSP stuff, the IF bandwidth display is nice. also have you tried OpenWebRX for any of the decoding pipelines, i started using it to run decoders headless on a pi and it changed how i use the whole setup.