I am interested in using an SDR for direction finding in remote mountain terrain. Think of steep mountains and valleys where people could hike, bike, ski, etc. I have a few questions regarding the use of the KrakenSDR for this purpose. I am new to direction finding so I don’t know all of the intricacies yet.
Is the KrakenSDR with the 5 whip antennas a good choice for this or is there a better antenna type/configuration that I should use?
What kind of range can I expect? Is 1 mile possible, or half a mile, or a few hundred yards?
What kind of transmitter should I use for this experiment? My goal is to use something reasonably portable and compact that can be carried with you.
What’s a full set of equipment you’d recommend to get a working setup with a transmitter, receiver, and direction finding capabilities?
Mountain terrain can be difficult because of the signal being blocked and reflected a lot by the mountain walls, rocks, snow and trees.
If you want to try it, the 5 whip antennas are a good start.
We can’t estimate the range, there’s no way to say. It totally depends on what transmitter you use, and what sort of environment the transmitter and receiver is at any point.
Something like an EPIRB seems common enough for this environment, but you of course don’t want to be activating on those frequencies for a test. If you don’t have legal permission to use a certain frequency, you might have to go with an ISM band transmitter, which is pretty limited in power.