This channel is all about wallet-friendly radio fun, and discovering (or rediscovering) the magic of radio.
There are adventures in HF, VHF & UHF - with the occasional tour into LF & VLF (yep you can receive* tactical communications being broadcast to submarines with a sub $100 investment).
We look at the amazing things you can do with inexpensive hardware. We use $25 Software Defined Radios to track military and civilian aircraft, decode information from satellites, and monitor local Public Safety broadcasts (Police, Fire, Ambulance and so on).
We have a beginner SDR Guide - perfect for those just starting out in the world of SDR - check out the 2020 SDR Guide playlist (ru-vid.com/group/PLe5ZKeM2hRBJ2G_Gvt1JnBxqtjHMMej3q)
Subscribing is a great help to the channel - so if you're up for joining a community people who love all things radio, then please hop on board, subscribe, hit the notification bell, and enjoy the content on a regular basis :-)
Simple DMR and Simple APCO are working on SDR# Studio 1904! Found a saved install on a SD card that I was about to format. Running it on a Windows 11 mini pc right now. Listened to taxis all last night! Both plugins were install a year ago on a Windows 10 laptop. Glad I found that SD card! Yeah, and before last night I was seriously thinking on splurging a pile of $$$ on a digital scanner.
@@FrugalRadio Yep. Kind of given up on Simple DMR because it's obviously not supported anymore and the website went south about the time of the Ukraine invasion.
Would you be able to add any insight on the scan speed if this were used with a mobile device with less computing power than a computer (such as a cell phone). I would like to have a handheld sdr setup since I move it from vehicle to vehicle when going to watch the jets. As of now I use a Uniden BC365CRS and a Quansheng UV-K6. Which works, but scanning the whole milair band in under 3 seconds, or even 10 seconds would be a massive improvement! Thanks!
I don't know if it would be possible. Perhaps a Windows laptop running in tablet mode could do it, but I don't have that kind of hardware to test. I really haven't done any tests with Android or iOS devices. But if you give it a try, come back and let us know how it worked!
Thankyou for the time you put into these videos, I just gone my Youloop in the mail as my first SDR/Antenna , fun day listening to aussie air traffic as I worked from home today. For reference, I live about 55KM from one of our airports and I was able to listen to some of the conversations , I do however live on a flight path, so that may help, for anybody considering getting one you cant go wrong
Technically correct. But since the only way transmissions could be sent and received was via satellite, it also included communication via satellite. Just my cheeky way of pointing it out!
No one was using the S level scale. Military, professional radio installers, and aviation operators worldwide use a 5 level scale. It is actually very common outside the amateur radio community.
Thanks for taking the time to produce this video, You do a great job at explaining, I have my first SDR (Airspy HF+ Discovery ) on its way to me in Australia and a passive magnetic loop antenna Regarding the adapters @14:27, would a standard TV antenna on the roof be worth the adapters, would it cover any interesting frequency's or not
Thanks for your kind comments. Regarding your TV antenna, it is most likely highly directional. That enables it to pick up signals on a given frequency from further away. However, the cost is that it doesn't pick up many signals from any other direction. Do usually TV antennas don't work well for SDRs. We usually want to receive signals from multiple directions. Even a long wire of random length will provide interesting results on HF.
3 years late on this comment , but absolutely wonderful course so far! There is nothing I appreciate more than someone who is obviously passionate about this subject teaching something they love so well!
I'm old enough to remember when it took teams of technicians and thousands of dollars worth equipment to do this. Basically something only governments could do. I can see this being very useful as an emergency and rescue tool. Especially at sea where microphones can easily be damaged leaving transmitters only able to send a signal. Something that happened to me and my father when I was a young boy working on his shrimpboat. His thumb got cutoff and need Coast Guard air lift to the hospital. The mic go busted when a cable snapped and took his thumb. We waved down a friend on a nearby boat they called the Coast Guard for us. If not for that he would've died since he had a heart attack shortly after they lifted him on to the Helicopter.
Why are u stopping at 380? Milair uhf needs upto 399.975 your mudding 20 mhz ok sone tetra there too in uk nit many uhf airband, along with 137 to 155.975 am 25 kHz
Fox hunting at its best! Price is a little steep however for the average hobbiest, this would have been handy several decades ago when I worked in the commercial radio business for tracking abusers and pirate repeaters.
Some places still use the older Motorola Golay format. There were paging programs one could load onto older computers but utilized modem cards to dial into the paging transmitters over dedicated DID ( direct inward dialing ) inbound lines to the paging terminals. User could bring up the program and send a page, numeric or alpha, to the specific user.
In the hobby space, this is the only product I am aware of. For commercial / industrial use, there are other products. Check out Rohde & Schwarz - www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/products/aerospace-defense-security/receivers-and-direction-finders_63723.html
I didn't measure the time, but I found the latency to be higher than I would prefer. An entire transmission has to be completed before the message plays back. It is quite noticing when there are long transmissions, especially if you have another SDR or scanner that is monitoring the frequency / transmission live.
Nice video. Interesting what you can still see there in Edmonton, Canada. Here in the Netherlands we have strickt privacy legacy. Besides that the services of fire, ambulance and police changed over to the digital tetra based system (C2000) for their voice communication that we can no longer listen to, they still have a pager network operational (P2000) on 169.65 MHz in Flex 1600 mode. But they are reducing the information there also because of the privacy rules. The police has stopped using the pager system, however they remained sending press messages there. But recently they have decided to stop that too. Btw I just discovered another weaker pager signal next to the P2000 on 169.625. It were messages first in French than also in Dutch. They are from Belgium. It looks like hospital and ambulance services. Did not know about that... It is in POCSAG 2400
Thanks for your report on the state of transmissions in NL. Cool that you can receive the Belgian pager signal too. I was traveling in the UK last month. Still saw some Ambulance traffic on the pager networks, as well as general medical info.
@@FrugalRadio Ok. I just found the confirmation that indeed on 169.625 is the Astrid pager system from Belgium. And alle other public pager systems have ceased to exist here in the Netherlands. Just wonder where the hospital pagers here in NL are...
Hello Sir, does LTE/4G radios grab all carrier 4g /lte services? for example if one has a stronger signal over another does it use that one? or is it like buying a phone where your under one carrier? Thanks,
Devices like these operate with a SIM card. You may use one with a local carrier, or a network agnostic SIM that will let you choose the strongest carrier. All depends on your SIM.
step 1: get HFDL up and running step 2: get angry at how many planes ping the wrong ICAO hex on HF vs ADS-B step 3: run node-red to find/replace hexes on the way into your map. This was my week last week.
To the best of my knowledge, there has not been an updated version made. It runs fine on Windows 7. Perhaps it would run on Win 10/11 in compatibility mode. However this is not something I've tested.
I'm in! Looking forward to many more very informative videos. I'm just into the hobby, using a Nooelec Smartee SDR dongle and a moonraker discone mobile antenna (in the loft!). Air band scanning will be my main interest. Subscribed!
Would you mind sharing your config? I'm trying to monitor a bunch of conventional channels but everything is being recorded as TG 1... :/ Thanks in advance Rob!
can this work for HD FM radio s ?? some are illegally bleeding on 104.7 103 101.9 nyc connecticut marjet NPR bleeds on my redosx TIC FM HD 2 ... can this clear my issue up ?...
I use different antennas based on the band in listening to. This was probably done on a 700 MHz dipole, but could have been a Larson 150/450/ 758 tri band mobile antenna as I have a couple of those as well.
That device is actually an Unun, not meant for balanced antennas. If you cut the black wire the colored wire to 10.8m, and cut the black wire to 5.33m and lay the black wire on the ground, you may improve reception. Recommended lengths for the colored wire in feet (sorry mate) are 29 35.5 41 58 71 84 107 119 148 203 347 407 423.
