The TinySA is an incredible peice of kit, but it's way more powerful than most realise! Let's play some radio! TinySA Ultra amzn.to/46xbZKx EBIKE KITS www.kirbebike.com
I was a kid in the 70's and my father, who was a kid himself during WWII, brought out his old shortwave set. I'd spend hours listening to all sorts of broadcasts. It's been years since I've listened to one but this Tiny SA looks interesting. Perhaps Santa will bring me one . ;)
You could of course make a prayer ti Santa Maris - Santa Barbara - or a host of others. However - there is a slight problem. They can only communicate with the DEAD You will thus have to wait a while until you meet the criteria
I bought a spectrum analyser for business use in 1984, which cost me £6500.00. The sort of stuff that is out there today is far more convenient and easy to use. The only advantage the forty year old stuff has is the front end attenuators and calibration, having said that, I've not used it in twenty years. For £77 I might just treat myself. Thanks for the video Andy.
You most definitely should imo ... Really cool to get your perspective ... As a mid 30s guy who's grown up and lived in the nyc metro area ... Super interesting to hear how the scene was during decades before my time and even more so from the other side of the pond. If you will definitely be able to make use of it, I actually have this exact SA but I inadvertently ended up with 2 identical units after ordering one and 2 wks post estimated delivery date, I reported it not arriving and was sent a replacement which arrived via complimentary express delivery. Fast forward nearly 7-8 weeks, the original one arrived. I only opened it to confirm what it was but nothing beyond that and would love it to get into the hands of an active enthusiast. My dad and brother will be traveling to England in mid April for business, and I could have them ship it domestically within the UK to you. Im not big on selling stuff via eBay or Craigslist etc but with this sort of thing, gifting it to an internet stranger with an interesting anecdote sounds good to me lol. If interested, drop a reply and we can figure out via email.
There is a tiny little man inside the box, running back and forth, super fast. Listening to everything, and he makes little marks on the screen! He is like a teeny tiny Flash!
Hey Andy, we use these tiny SA's todo a quick check on LED light bars/Headlights at work - Most LED lights are very noisy due to the fast switching, It becomes a problem on a vehicles digital data packet receive . If we find a noisy lightbar/lamp it has to be uninstalled for safety. Awesome video - never thought to listen in! 73's
Looks like I've just found my Christmas present to myself 😂. I've had a tiny SA for quite a while. Amazing bit of kit!! This updated version should be a very nice addition to the shack.
In the mountains of western North America wildlife collars have largely transitioned to satellite, but many have retained dual capability wjth VHF for facilitating field use in real time as GPS data can be 6 hours old based on the upload interval (because uploads are hard on battery life). As most bears nowdays only receive a collar if they mis-behaved near town, now you have the potential to go for a backcountry hike and if you see some wildlife sign, switch on your Tiny SA and see if there are any potential bad actors in your vicinity.
Thank you for the run-down on this little device. I have seen it it a few other videos, but I think this one sold me. BTW, the music outtro was nice too!
Apart from picking up noise from a neighbour’s inverter and making him feel really guilty. 😂 I have only used mine for working on radios…obviously there’s endless possibilities with these...Thanks for the Video Andy.
On the strength of this video I bought a tinySA.. then I discovered your CB content!!.. I remember walking off the mountain towards the Jamaican Inn in Cornwall, I could see my parents headlights in the pubs carpark but couldn't hear her whatsoever, then a kind chap from Scotland did a relay for us.. how weird the outer Atmosphere was that day, quite a epic relay.. I also have my radio licence but have not used it in years..
This is really interesting, my hobby is metal detecting, and metal detectors run from 4KHz to 80KHz, depending on the machine. If you had a display like the TinySA. You could get a better picture of what is in the ground. Thanks.
I want to start doing that but its expensive to get started, I have a good job but I swear everyone is wealthy but me is what it seems like online real life is differnet
As an American watching this video,I had to laugh when you said 'tiny one hundred pound device' as a picture of a small but massively heavy thing flashed in my mind. We are so old fashioned. LOL Seriously,this seems an awesome little device to have ,just for hobby fun.
@@ChatGPT1111 that’s not so funny…. You think the uk globalist don’t want the USA ? Why do you think joe Biden is destroying this country as fast as possible.. who do you think these scum work for? Your daft.
Hi Andy. Thank you for all the videos you have made for us. 🙏 I have the "imposed" question... is it possible to differentiate ssb? Thanks in advance. 🙏
With a directional beam antenna this would be the top rig for Fox Hunting. Also finding QRM causing problems in your station. It can show you harmonics and more. I found a problem that was wiping out my HF station. It turned out to be the "Wall Wart" PS that charges my Apple laptop. When I located it I unplugged it and the S meter went from 7-9 down to 1-2 and stations started coming in. Use one to locate a miss placed Bluetooth device "if it is on and charged" or a cell phone if it has the WiFi turned on. 73s
I think most people, who own these Tiny SA gizmos, don't know what every feature is, or how to use them. They buy it for the one or two features they want to use it for, and thats all they every use it for! (Like tuning an antenna or checking spurious emmissions!)
Great video, a couple of tips for you (and others).... these things are super sensitive to front end blow out when hooking up an outside antenna that may have static build up, suggest grounding your antenna center conductor to ground prior to hooking up to the Ultra.. also, suggest swapping out that SO-239/SMA adapter to a pigtail of the same genders, hanging that heavy adapter AND the cable and it's PL-259 off the SMA is asking for a snapped SMA. Also, I'd be a bit more careful about keying up a portable like you did the Icom so close to the unit, same reasons, you'll blow out the front end, especially in light of the fact I didn't see you turn off the LNA.. sure, you may be on an external antenna but that's a plastic case and you don't have any attenuation inline if it also came down the coax... thanks for the great video....
@Jennifer-007 Thanks for the great insights! I am a beginner... would be this device better for listening to interesting foreign radio stations than a regular radio, like a Tecsun? I do not want to spend a lot of money, but would like to have a nice device to listen for the whole spectrum, anything radio :)
Belka Dx, table top performance in your pocket, about £150 from Alex the maker in Belarus. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--SBSQ_M2uz0.htmlsi=eg1DdHfDGOCUCyA9
Looks like a cool device. The biggest advantage apoears to be a large bandwidth. I still prefer sdr dongles. Usually i know what im targeting and where to set my bandwidth. I use 2 rtl-sdrs to listen to my local county police using sdrtrunk. I also like the many software options and versatility of using a laptop.
Nice. I like it. however, where I am there would be just loads of wideband noise across a load of the RF spectrum. that's why I use magloop antennas. With my SDRdx, I can have up to 8 meg wide bandwidth but yoou loose so much detail with it that wide.
The TinySA is awesome. A bench spectrum analyzer is really out of financial reach. And? Portable, NOT! It really lets you explore your World. I noticed door burgler alarm system, even my key fobs. Great to find noise, just use a portable AM transistor radio to "steer" you by nulling, and then get close with the NanoVNA. Did you know it's ALSO an RF Generator? Yep! The NanoVNA (and the TinyVNA and the RTL-SDR as well!!!) Are GAME CHANGERS. As are our modern scopes. All the Best! 73 DE W8LV BILL
In the US you are allowed to listen to any signal on the spectrum. If its on the air, then its free for anyone to hear. If its encrypted, you are not allowed to try to dexrypt it though.
Is the Seesii one that you are using the way to go? At least in the US there are two offered, Aursinc and Seesii -- with no discernable difference between them other than price. Any recommendation there?
Excellent product review.......even more AWESOME....OUTRO MUSIC! I think I heard this or a version very similiar to this on a Podrunner podcast from Steve Boyett...one of the high bpms to get your heart racing....anyway...thanks for all you do for the community.
This is good these days for entertaintment only. I'm in the US and wish I had this back in the 90's when I installed and repaired RF equipment for a communications company mainly for police, fire, and ems. Now in many states and mine the RF is digitally scrammbled for local police "Due to the bad guys" ruining it for the good citizens but what else can we do until somebody cracks the code. But it's great for people that want to learn about radio frequency! Nice Video.
Wel wel you have just changed my mind on buying one of these.Can you tell me which model you have cos there's so many to choose from.Great informative videos on radio
Only goes to 960 MHZ. Thats why its so cheap. Push it up to 5 GHz and its a whole different game. I remember listening to phone calls on my Radio shack scanner back in the late 90s in the 900 Mhz band. Cell phones quickly moved up higher and fixed intercept capabilities. Newt Gingrich's intercepted phone call help seal that!
Most scanners front ends were so cheaply made you didn't need 900MHz to listen to cellular. Just tuning through 400MHz and upwards would allow you to listen to cellular. Incidentally, I was asked to move on when I was auditing freqs from a football club. The massive spike I saw on the screen was the security bloke calling his boss to say there was a bloke with something outside the gate. On being approached he asked me to step over the building line as I was bringing the club into disrepute. My reply asked if that was the same level of disrepute the supporters curried when they lost the game? I stood the other side of the non existent building line for 15m and then left. The bloke was vacuous and did not understand my explanation of what I was showing him.
Used to love my CB radio and Uniden Bearcat scanner. Youngsters these days think a scanner is just for uploading photos and documents, if they only knew lol
Interesting video. I have an earlier version of the tiny SA. It doesn't have the bells and whistles yours does but it meets my needs. On the other hand I just replaced my nano VNA with a nano VNA-F and what a difference between the 2 units. Bigger screen, broader range up to 3 Ghz, and better user interface. Since I am an amateur licensee who like to experiment with antenna design it will come in handy. Back before I retired I worked in the defense industry I used HP VNAs and toward the end used an Agilent PNAx. This Nano VNA has a lot of the same functionality but at a fraction of the cost. Maybe you could do a video about it and how it is used in antenna analysis. 73 de N1ABE >>
why I bought mine: when the OTA tv industry moved to digital TV back in 2009, TV stations were allowed to keep their channel number that was assigned back when a channel number was assigned to a specific 6 mhz band of frequencies. now, it is just a label. I have a CCTV system. 24 cameras, 4 each, on 6 DVRs. I put the output of these DVRs onto unused analog channels and distribute these through the house via a CATV system from a demolished apartment. problem: you can't tell if a channe; is set on a frequency used by a new user after the OTA channel moved out. The TVs are not capable of demodulating the unfamiliar signaL I use my tiny sa to determine if the anlog channel space is open before I set the channel in my Rf modulator, and avoid the aggravation caused by interference a secondary use is: take it to a truck stop to show CB users the actual effect of tweaking up a CB to put more fire in the wire. show that person that, in reality, there is more power going out, but not in the CB band where it belongs. think about this: do the golden screwdriver guys tell CB users to use bigger fuse, since they are inherently using more DC power to send more RF power?
Thanks. As Radio Amateurs, you and I would use it for monitoring our signals for spurious transmissions. Perfectly legitimate, and pretty much mandatory from a licensing viewpoint. .
Top review. It would be great to see further reviews of similar kit. Have you any reviews on those SDR dongles. Newbe here. Greetings from accross the pond in Dundalk.
I've got something very similar. It's just amazing. If you string up a long wire ariel up in the garden, you'll be blown away with what you can hear. It's a hobby just on its own.
Those connections look like the dame connections on my wifi car radiio either that or the GPS connections. Also the dabs unit allows you to listen & watch to different TV stations.
So, you could use this like a the old "frequecy counter", that instantly tells you a transmitter frequency in a local area. Ie. To find Bugs and now.. Blue Tooth trackers, and wireless cameras! Pretty handy mode in the Tiny SA, most people don't even know they have! 🔎
@andy kirby great video ! sorry but if i connect in the audio out a heardset i listen the radio station ? or is necessary a speaker witha a BF amplificator ? tnx 73 PS you an ham-radio , your call ?
Try looking around 20MHz. If I'm right the visiting ET scout craft in the 15 meter diameter size will have a main tone around 20MHz and complex upper harmonics. They use field propulsion instead of jets or rockets and it seems that part of that is electromagnetically activating the surface and at very significant power levels. Because even modest power radio travels very far these ET craft could be detectable at extreme distances when zipping about or in hover mode. They should be recognizable because the tone wont contain audio, video or digital. It should just be a very steady tone. With triangulation we could pinpoint them and determine speed. The frequency should strictly correspond to size of the craft.
If that little device is 100 pounds, that's quite a heavy device. And I am very impressed with your ability to whip that heavy object around so effortlessly 😂
Wait till the find out that the SDR (Software Defined Radio) can not only receive but decode some of the 'encrypted' radio so you can listen to 'secret' transmissions!! And with the proper antenna, and internet access, you can track local aircraft flights, and identify the N numbers and other FAA 'secrets'!
@@jamiemoo2000 not encrypted...but it can decode digital modes, such as for aero purposes: ACARS and HFDL. There are others used by among others, the military, with ALE, that it can decode. It can decode trunked radio systems and enable you to listen to talkgroups....as long as they aren't encrypted. But there is plenty of digital traffic to enjoy. I've used it for quite a few, such as viewing imagery from the NOAA satellites, or ACARS from a geostationary satellite approx 10,000 miles away.
@@jamiemoo2000 I have done it on my own laptop and SDR, don't tell me it can't be done! Or are you one of 'those' who only has windows on their computer?
Thank you for the info and demo of this neat device. I check Amazon, via your link, and sadly as of today Nov 22, 2023 (USA), I earn this: Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. I'll keep checking
Re legality, I believe the wording is that, in the UK, you are only allowed to listen to transmissions *intended for general reception*. ie not 'private communications'. Therefore, scanning is legal prima facie. Further, as private communications eg government emergency services, cell phones etc are encrypted, there is nothing to which to listen, and you wouldn't even be able to determine that they are private communications.
Just received my TinySA and love it. I worked for HP/ Agilent/ Keysight for almost 37 years on the test equipment side and I'm blown away by what your SA can do. It's quite easy to navigate and I do have a question though...I see a 3.5mm jack on the TinySA Ultra (which I do not have) but I do not see one on my unit. How do I listen to demodulated signals?
