5 Cool Things You Can Do With An RTL SDR Receiver 

moorek1967, I have been a ham since 1962, and I can tell you that there is nothing wrong with listening, but it is highly illegal to transmit on any military airband. Your dad was very lucky that he didn't wind up making GI shoes at Leavenworth for 20 years.

@@j.d.schultzsr.9215 I know.

@@j.d.schultzsr.9215 it’s never happened. The FCC does nothing more than send out letters of warning. There has been no one who has gone to the federal pen for violating FCC “laws.” However if someone had gone to prison for violating FCC policy, please let me know….but that’s probably not going to happen.

@@bodazaphfa You are correct about nobody going to prison for FCC violations. The worst court-imposed penalties are "Cease and desist orders" and fines. The American Radio Relay Leage (ARRL, est. 1914), in their monthly journal, QST frequently publishes FCC court proceedings.

​@@j.d.schultzsr.9215 As someone who use to work with the military as air traffic control, it is very common for us to hear other people and sports stadiums on our radios. Nothing wrong with accidents happening only time I've ever seen anyone say anything about it was when someone was doing it on purpose to cause issues by giving out false information

Yeah, no one mentioned it. NOAA sattelites

Is that how Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) works?

you got it get this wifi adapter called radio lads you for picking up long distance it's top of the line to im going to order it

oh you got to get radio lads wifi adapter for picking up long range frequencys

You’re welcome ! 👌

Thank you and you’re welcome! 🤪

Thanks for your support and glad you enjoyed the video, I’ll be sure to check out your channel and sub back, thanks! 😁

Thank you, sir.

Thanks! Well, you can actually do that. With a wideband receive sdr, like the SDRPlay RSP1A which does 10mhz band width, you can record as an I/Q file, which means when you play it back through the SDR software you can tune within the 10mhz bandwidth you recorded :-) maybe I should do a video on this subject. Thanks!

I could see on that time/frequency graph that your SDR was seeing several RF envelopes at once. I took a look at SDR years ago, and at the time the software was no doubt the limiting factor. Would i be correct in assuming that the "I/Q" has something to do with quadrature? Back in the day I was very conversant in the modulation scheme used for NTSC baseband video, YIQ. Where I live now, we have a lot of military aircraft operating, and I've been meaning to eavesdrop on their operations. That's one nut that I never got to crack; after my home town lost its air refueling wing, there wasn't much to hear in the upper air band. Even civilian air coms are less rewarding to voice-only listeners. As a sometimes pilot who knows full-time airline pilots, I know that most of the "good stuff" in air-ground coms is sent over TTY on company frequencies. With a SDR or two, it would be possible to track a flight in real time, and to decode ACARS, Company and any other TTY traffic. Add in transponder data, and you have a very detailed picture! I look forward to your future videos. Thanks for the timely reply!

Thanks Jackson! There’s only so much my brain can remember lol.. Cheers for confirming this. 👌

Tech Minds To be honest, I had to look up what frequency ATC starts on

Jackson Abernat

Your very welcome! :-)

You’re welcome dude!

Thanks so much! I appreciate the positive feedback. If you have any questions or would like me to cover anything in future videos please feel free to drop me a message or reply to this comment! 👌

Thank you for your kind words 🙏

Thanks dude! Looks like It just passed 1000! :-)

WE MADE IT

THANK YOU! So much better lol.

Although I do sometimes squelch the static, I grew up with analogue variable capacitors tuning a tank circuit to receive RF signals. Thus, I grew up hearing the white noise produced by the big Bang and appreciate it. One can pick out extremely weak signals from an open squelch. Sometimes, with the squelch on, the extremely weak signals can not be heard.

@@indridcold8433 .

The squelch doesn’t work on SSB or CW

LORDY thank you!

You’re welcome

Are you me?

You Sir, have an intelligent mind. Most people limit the input to the Cranium. Lazy brains.

Shawn Tartaglia I was never a great student growing up but I started study of ham radio in 6th grade age 12! School never was top priority for me again once licensed. I’ve been in pursuit of new knowledge daily every day since! Love learning and studying electronics. I will never be an expert engineer but I’m gonna have fun trying

I'm the same. Normal people have one or two hobbies... Not me!

Me too.

Thanks dood!

Thanks John for your support and glad you enjoyed the video :)

There's nothing like a properly tuned antenna for the given frequency that you wish to receive. Coliears are good because they can be quite wideband for the given frequency they are designed for which gives you some margin for error when homebrewing antennas. 1090Mhz is such a tiny wavelength so the antenna doesn't have to be big at all. I can cover antennas in a video as I have built many over the years, but I'll have a think about what content to have. Thanks! :-)

If you can output the audio from your scanner in to your PC using the Line or Mic input of the sound card, that is sufficient to use DSD+ to decode it.

73 from KE5JPS.

You’re very welcome! I’m in the process of creating a Part 2 to this video so keep your eyes peeled for that :)

I’m not entirely sure about grib files. However, you can most certainly receive weather faxes from orbiting satellites. I’m i the process of creating a new video which may cover this. Thanks for watching :)

Tech Minds There are freewares, UGRIB for ex, but they require a download from the web. It would be special to use this in areas too far from shores. Im rooting for you👍 Ordering the hardware soonest. Thank you for the vids!!

Weather radio broadcasts in the United States (NOAA NWR) and Canada (Weatherradio Canada) occur on seven dedicated frequencies: 162.400, 162.425, 162.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162.525, and 162.550 MHz.

Derek O'Brian Thank you for doing this research. I now have the hardware in hand, next is the time. Hopefully this weekend. I have an ssb isolator in my standing rigging. Going to attempt w small antennae that came with, then connect it to the ssb antennae to the diff, which may be necessary. Will keep you posted soon. Thank you again!!

there exist other videos on youtube on how to recieve recent NOAA satelite data (of different varieties) with an SDR and DIY better arial. like this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cjClTnZ4Xh4.html

Hi bought Rtl sdr v 4. Can you suggest a general easy type antenna to use and is quick to build.

Looks like I found my answer ;)

Thanks for watching Geoff! Let me know if you would like me to cover anything in future videos that could help you out 👌

They're well worth the $10 or so I got mine for. If you live in a area that broadcasts digital radio as DAB+ or digital TV as DVB you can use them to receive the broadcasts on a PC. It supports hardware decoding of the digital TV and radio signals. I live in the US, and because ATSC is the broadcast type and HD channels are 6MHz wide, these are useless for TV here. It is possible to receive a SD subchannel, however you'd need to software decode the ATSC signal, which takes a LOT of processing power. Still works good for FM radio and for use as a SDR though.

I have a ham technician license and its basically useless unless you want to be a storm spotter on the RACES frequencies.

X of

+1 for the most important advice here. Especially when you tweak around with the squelch function.

yes it will.

Do you have any good documentation for running these devices on Linux? From what I see, most documentation is for running things on Windows.

Consider a broad-band antenna, like a Discone, for vhf uhf bands. analyze your single-band antennas with a low-cost (comparatively) Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). LEARN A BIT OF RADIO ELECTRONICS..i.e. resistance/reactance, and how to incorporate that into using Smith-charts to match antennas to your receiver. hey...wait... your damn near ready to get serious about getting an Amateur Radio Licence (aka your ham ticket). Terry KG0DU

Thanks Mike! :)

I have an upcoming video where I cover the NooElec nano, which can be used on a mobile phone. You can also run Adsb software on the photo or tablet too. Look out for my video or google NooElec Nano and SDR Touch for Android. Technically adsb is transmitted on 1090mhz, but to decode the packets of data you need software.

Thanks Brian! :)

With two SDR receivers yes you can :) or you could purchase an SDRPlay RSPDuo which can do both with one device. If you take a look at one of my SDRPlay videos I show exactly how to do it with a RSPDuo

Thanks! :-)

Its is possible, I have connected my SDR receiver to a Raspberry Pi and used KODI with a PVR plugin. I will do some research on Windows Software too and possibly make a video on it. Thanks!

And NOAA Weather Radio.