[K3PZN-List] Neat Receiver for cheap

[wa3mej at comcast.net]

About 2 months ago I was talking to KT1R on the phone. He was attempting to get an SDR receiver working but could not get the software to recognize the unit. This little USB dongle is supposed to receive signals between about 25 MHZ to just a little less than 2Ghz.  Well not having seen this unit before I could not help him much. 



So I decided this sounded like an interesting project and looked on EBAY where I found severala varieties of these units in the $10 to $20 range. I purchased mine for $10.44 shipping included. About 3 wks later it arrived. By this time I had read as much as possible on the little unit and even downloaded the software and driver for the little unit. 



When the unit arrived I decided to load the drivers and software manually and about 4 hours later decided I had had enough. The SDR uses a special driver and software downloaded from the SDR# (thats SDR Sharp) web site and it included a full install file. After 5 minutes the software was installed and I could operate the receiver. WOW 



While I dont have a signal generator in the house I verified that I could receive the CB frequencies and also the 2Mtr band.  The upper end was a little harder as I dont have anything that emits a signal at 1700 MHZ which is the upper limit of my unit. 

My unit takes an MMCX connector which is not easily found at hamfests but you can get them at the bigger electronics stores, I just happened to have one in my parts bin. Putting this unit on an outside antenna I can often and using a broadband amp I can hear 800mhz signals, MilSat in the 230-400 band and several other frequencies including aircraft and NOAA weather. 



The nice thing about this little receiver is that the display is divided in to 10db vertical increments which are amazingly accurate according to one friend of mine. ESo I put an external HP attenuater in the line and found that I could vary the signals with very good linearity. 



AWESOME this is now a cheap simple spectrum analyzer for checking VHF and UHF transmitters. 

ALso there has been at least one article that described a down converter to allow you to receive the HF bands down to 100 KHz or so and its very simple to build. How cool is this! 



This receiver also makes it easy to place a CW skimmer on line and automatically report CW signals heard on the VHF bands AND it decodes as much as a 6MHz chunk of the band at one time without stepping through descrete frequencies.  

Software also exists to allow uses as a scanner, to receive P25 Digital voice, and several other neat features exist also. 

Below I have included a few links for anyone that wants to add this little tool to their station. 



Jim WA3MEJ 

P.S. The R820T version of this SDR receiver appears to have more sensitivity than the others. 



http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr 
http://sdrsharp.com/ 
http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/ 
http://blog.kf7lze.net/2012/09/14/round-up-of-rtlsdr-upconverter-choices/ 
http://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/virtual-radar-server/ 




Long Live Seal Team VI 

http://www.qsl.net/wa3mej/index.htm