I had private correspondence about this, so here is additional information.
Some of these remote receivers do have 'bad' antennas, others not so.
For 'local' reception, one does not need much.
I have an AirSpy HF+ SDR with a 'bad' Mini-Whip antenna in the backyard,
at only 4 meters above the ground. It's performance is good enough to
receive LW broadcasting stations from Europe, and North Africa. But they
use MegaWatts, you say? Fair enough, but it's around 200 kHz.
Enough MW stations in North America, located from 500-1000 km from my
place. But they use KiloWatts, you say? Not all of them, lots of so
called graveyard stations run much less than 1 kW, and the MW band is
from 520 to 1,720 kHz.
Navtex on 518 kHz, using around 1 kW of power. Finally, NDBs. These can
use as little as 25 Watts from 120 to 300 kHz.
These remote receivers are a problem for the integrity of the hobby,
regardless of the antenna used.
Funny enough, they are not 'automatically' good for cheating with FT8,
due to latency issues, unless the SDR is a Perseus, but most aren't.
They are usually Kiwi, AirSpy, RTL-SDR.
73 de Vince, VA3VF
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