Friday, April 5, 2019

Venturing into SDR

I ordered an SDR from Amazon. The SDR is RTL-SDR Blog R820T2 RTL2832U as pictured below and was $29.95 with free prime shipping. I will add to this article as I try to get this working.

Here is the info from the Amazon site:

Quickstart Guide: rtl-sdr.com/QSG 
V3 Features Guide: rtl-sdr.com/V3 
Antenna Guide: rtl-sdr.com/DIPOLE 

This is an RTL-SDR blog software defined radio receiver with RTL2832U ADC chip, R820T2 tuner, 1PPM TCXO, SMA F connector and aluminium case with passive cooling. Tunes from 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz with up to 3.2 MHz (2.4 MHz stable) of bandwidth. (HF works in direct sampling mode). Perfect for use as a computer based radio scanner with free software like SDR#, HDSDR, SDR-Radio, GQRX or SDR Touch on Android. Works on Windows, OSX, Linux, Android and computers like the Raspberry Pi. 

Great for many applications including general radio scanning, air traffic control, public safety, ADS-B aircraft radar, ACARS, trunked radio, P25/MotoTRBO digital voice, POCSAG, weather balloons, APRS, NOAA APT/Meteor M2 weather satellites, radio astronomy, DAB, or as a low cost panadapter with a ham radio. 

Comes with a multi-purpose dipole antenna kit which is perfect for beginners. The short antennas are great for ADS-B, and the longer antennas work well at lower frequencies. When used in a v-dipole configuration the antenna works well for 137 MHz weather satellites and the ISS. Use in a vertical configuration for terrestrial signals. The two mounts and 3m of RG174 cable allow you to easily mount the antenna outdoors. 

This model has several improvements over other brands. It uses the improved R820T2 tuner, a 1PPM TCXO, better components, a redesigned lower noise PCB, cooling improvements, extra ESD protection and an SMA F connector. It also has a software activatable bias-tee for powering LNA's and active antennas. Full info available on the improvements at goo.gl/MD12bD

For enabling HF reception below 24 MHz please see the V3 features guide: rtl-sdr.com/v3 and please feel free to contact us via Amazon messaging for technical support - we're happy to help.


 

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