RTL-SDR - cheap fun with SDR#

JohnFreeman

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I got a couple hours to play with the $30 (actually it's $20...just checked) RTL-SDR dongle I got off of Amazon and got it playing with SDR# software. It's a pretty amazing little thing. It's a bit fiddly to get it playing (at least with my rudimentary Pee Cee skills) but once going it's impressive.

I'll post some updates in the next week or so ....
 
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I have a couple of those I played with a few years ago. No front end, but neat to tinker with using SDR#. Very wide range.
 
Played some more tonight with the RTL-SDR dongle and I'm impressed. I have about 25' of wire laying in the floor down the hallway and 40m and 80 sounds great tonight....at least in the CW portion. I have the SDRplay rig too, and will spend some more time with it. If I recall , it's got a 12 bit DAC so the IF should be wider.

Next steps will be to do some ACARS loggings and then to try and see if I can log some of the balloons that folks are flying around the world, sending telemetry via JT, etc.

Big fun for $20. Way more radio than I thought it would be.
 
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