Captain, could you please suggest a touchscreen kit? I know very little about them.

Thank you in advance for your insight

ETA: For those of you looking for a versatile, well-made antenna for wideband receive I have had excellent luck with the Diamond D130J Super Discone mounted in my attic. It will receive 25 to 1300MHz in any mode. More info here LINK

It's just under six feet tall without a mast, and around two feet wide at the bottom-so keep that in mind when you are figuring out where to mount it.


UHF Connector version LINK
Type-N Connector version LINK

Y'all cost me too much money.

*eagerly reaches into wallet*

After seeing this thread yesterday I just ordered a couple for myself.

Considering the extremely modest price of these units, this is easily the lowest cost yet most eagerly anticipated purchase I've ever made because of ARFcom. I'm completely stoked to start playing with these...thank you William


Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

Hmmm.  May have to get one to play with.

I got mine feeding into flightradar24.com

Just got mine from Nooelec last night, running it on gqrx on my mac.  Not the best software from a features standpoint but it works until I can find a scrap PC to dedicate.  The stock antenna IS pretty bad, but it's enough to prove the concept.  Got a "Scantenna" in the box waiting for all the damn connectors to show up along with the Ham it Up upconverter.  Aint like anyone at Radio Slack would have a clue on how to find me a SMA to F connector.  

This might be a helpful guide to those doing the SDR# installs.



http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide/

If anyone wants to track A/C with one of these using windows pc, I highly recommend the free Virtual Radar Server, this thing rocks.







 

I've had to buy some weird connectors on ebay to get it all working.

 

Has anyone found a cheaper discone antenna?   Or tried cracking the case and adding a better antenna connector?

There are MCX-male to Female F, SMA, etc. available on Amazon if you want to mate up to an existing antenna or particular connector with the Nooelec-type dongle.

My generic dongle has a female PAL connector, so I got a couple male PAL to female F connectors.  Then I had to order and wait again for SMA male to female F when I got the other radio.    So much for planning ahead, at least I have an ample supply of test leads.

Got my Ham It Up board and aluminum case from NooElec.

Did the case fit nicely?  I've got to open up the antenna connector port on that end piece, looks like either the connector or the switch is in a little crooked, damn case won't go together.  Going to dremel flute the bitch I think.

May have to try this.

Mine fit in the case perfectly.

 

I got lucky.

It'll just take a minute or three to put it right though.

I guess I'm in for the whole nine.  Since I was already in the process of building an HTPC, might as well throw this in to boot.  It was just way too easy to add this to my Amazon cart which already had the final bits and pieces in it.  I have no idea what I'm getting into, but like someone else said, I have the time to fill.

Seem like a pretty cool toy.

Best $20 I ever spent.

 
















 

It's a software defined receiver (SDR). Unlike a conventional receiver like an AOR AR8600 for example that is a box that mixes down frequencies then demodulates them using discreet circuitry such as AM, FM or single side band etc... with dedicated circuitry and a numerical display where you can only land on one frequency at a time, this is more like a spectrum analyzer with demodulation capability. It digitizes the signals into what is called I and Q data. That data is fed to the computer through the USB port. The software then reconstructs it into the raw representation of the span of what the device can capture. The dongles generally capture up to 2.4 MHz of band width reliably. Since that chunk of spectrum is digitized the computer can then manipulate the data and extract the information you want. It can digitally achieve AM, FM, single side band etc... demodulation through the software. Being that it's all digital there are no hardware restrictions. Whereas a conventional all mode receiver such as the AR8600 had to have dedicated crystal filters and other circuitry for certain filter bandwidths and modes the software equivalent of SDR is infinite. It's just numbers. You can dynamically adjust the filters to just about any width. You can also "see" literally that entire bandwidth of 2.4 MHz. That allows you to see signals as they pop up like targets on the berm of a range. Think of it as looking at a row of targets with the naked eye as apposed to a high power scope (conventional receiver). The advantage with SDR is that you can instantly zoom in on a signal and inspect it close up just like you could with a variable power scope. Once you get it zeroed in you can zoom back out, listen to that signal and also see the activity around as it's happening. It allows you to instantaneously see activity on a given chunk of spectrum and get a feel for the landscape. The variable filter size and basically limitless demodulation ability allows pretty much anything to be received as long as you have the supporting PC code to handle whatever the SDR throws at it.

It is to radio reception and monitoring what the mp3 is to a vinyl record.

I ordered one and it came as quick as a bunny.  Use HDSDR and SDRSharp.  So far this thing sucks, It does not pick up the weather broadcast, no 2M or 70CM repeaters, I live next to LRAFB, no VHF air traffic, the POS barely gets 5 FM radio stations.  So this is no $14.00 bargain, if you have to buy two, and two MCX adapters to get outside antennas, because I'm sure as sh#t am not getting anything like the YouTube vids are showing for reception on the antenna that came with this.  The programs are great, nice waterfall displays and freq spectrum but the RX of this thing sucks.  My 30 year old scanner with a 2M HT rubber duck antenna will at least pick up the repeaters and weather radio.

So bad with the stock antenna. Could barely pick up NOAA with it.
I need an apartment friendly antenna, any tips?

A piece of wire wrapped around the stud.

I guess we are just doing it wrong.  

Well if there is some other secret to getting the little antenna that comes with it to magically start sucking in more RF I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong.  I opened up my old Yeasu HT years ago and with a rubber duck HT antenna and in side my house, not only does it pick up all the UHF and VHF that is open, I can even hear folks ordering at the McDonalds drive through two miles away.

Can someone explain the Ham It Up v1.2 - NooElec RF Upconverter to me.

Much appreciated.

You really need an outside antenna. Once you get something like a discone or whatever hooked up and outside it will really amaze you.

It is a device that takes incoming signals and adds 125 MHz. The R820 tuner based dongles bottom out around 24 MHz so obviously listening to something like the 40 meter band in the 7 MHz range will not work. The Noo upcoverter will take that 7 MHz and add 125 = 132 MHz. A 125 MHz offset is setup in the software which basically subtracts that 125 MHz from the frequency indication so the user sees 7 MHz when it's actually tuned to 132 MHz. This effectively drops the available range of tuning down to 0. They work well.

 

Do you have a SmartMeter on your house?

http://bemasher.github.io/rtlamr/2014/02/08/innards.html

I hooked mine up to an outside antenna. Holy fucking overload and intermod, batman! Any strong signal is going to overload the fuck out of these little dongles. And I was picking up images of strong signals HUNDREDS OF MEGAHERTZ away from where they were supposed to be! In short, unless you have some sort of pre-selector between the antenna and receiver, you're gonna have problems. I might try building a simple high-pass filter to try and get rid of the lower frequency stuff, might get rid of some of the closer images which may be mixing with AM broadcast or other stuff...
Other than that problem, it's been a blast. Being able to see the signals on the waterfall is fun. Seeing the HD Radio sidebands on the FM broadcast band was interesting, sucks that there are no decoders. I was able to pick up stuff pretty much EVERYWHERE, but I think a combination of paging transmitters and broadcast band in both AM and FM was causing a lot of the intermod issues I was seeing. Might be better in a more rural environment, being in the middle of a city there is a lot of radio activity.
I've only tried SDR# on the PC(OK but not outstanding) and gqrx on the Mac(not impressed at all). I need to play around a bit with the software to see if I can get it doing something useful, and I'm going to see if I can get it to play nice with a Raspberry Pi also.





Something else I noticed is that little dongle gets HOT... I got this little tiny yellow one(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EM7HCKS/), if I pick up another one I'm going to find something a bit larger that I can remove the case on and add a heatsink.
 

From a website on the ADS-B aircraft tracking, someone recommended trimming the stock antenna to 69mm to make 1/4 wavelength of 1090 MHz.



















 

Did you adjust the gain down a bit and turn off the AGC?
I put one of the radioshack FM traps in line to kill off some of the FM broadcast overload. That helped greatly.

Thanks for that.  Off to order another Arfcom recommended piece of gear.  

I know.   But I am picking up quite a bit with the stock antenna.  
As soon as my adaptor comes in I have 4 antennas up about 30' to use.

What adapter are you using?



 

gonna have to read this thread later

MCX to PL-259 whenever it gets here.   coming from China I guess.

I just got one of these from amazon but could not get the driver from the manufacture to load.

I am running Windows XP and from th error log it looks like you need Vista or newer.



Anyone have any ideas?  I plan on buying a new pc in a month or two so if I have to wait no biggie.





8nBAIT

Try this from here: http://rtl1090.web99.de/

 

This is a cool little gadget.  My question relates to P25 trunked systems.  Where I live, most of the public safety agencies have gone to or are going to the P25 simulcast system.  Unfortunately, I have a terrible time listening to this system from my home on my PRO106 due to multipath distortion.  That is, the signal strength is VERY strong, but the radio can hardly decode anything.  The question is whether using two of these dongles with SDR# and Unitruncker will give me any hope of listening to this system or if it would just be a waste of time.

Have you tried turning on the built in attenuator on the scanner?

Oh yeah - tried that, tried a stubby antenna, paperclips, bought a yagi and pointed it in all different directions.  Nothing has given me consistent decode on this system.  I don't know why I think this SDR solution would help of than perhaps providing a little more flexibility to make adjustments.

I think I got "lucky" on my upconverter now too.

Got a "scantenna" with the necessary adapters.  Definitely getting a signal through it, it's showing tons more than the little stock antenna.  Put the upconverter inline, and signal drops off to a bare mousefart even on an FM station with a tower less than 2 miles away.

It's never fucking easy.  

Going to order one of these, quite a bit cheaper than the Diamond.  And Main Trading Company is a first rate company to work with.



http://www.mtcradio.com/jtd1-25-1300-mhz-discone-type-antenna/

Tag

I've got it running on my Android TV dongle.  Little flaky, but I can get local FM stations now.

I'm looking at this one:



http://www.adafruit.com/products/1601

For $35, it's hard to go wrong.

Why Are you using the upconvertor for The VHF band?
It is designed for use in the HF band.

I m saving so much money by not understanding this conversation