The Coolest Radio You've Probably Never Heard Of 

Back when I was a kid (1968), my dad gave me a WWII military receiver that could receive 100-400 KHz and 2.5-20 MHz. I spent hours plying the bands looking for good stuff like weather channels and other voice transmissions. Clocks in the house were set using WWV at 15 MHz. I plotted weather maps using a NOAA channel around 9.1 MHz. That old beast weighed in at around 200 pounds! Now you show me a tiny device about the size of a USB stick that can receive just about the entire spectrum! How I wish I had one of those when I was a kid... Edit: Yes, I bought one.

And, to boot, he doesn’t shout, wave his hands, and goes off in rants. Amd there’s no soul killing music. Well done, Sir!

The reason the RTL-SDR is so affordable, is because it was originally designed for tuning into TV signals. It's one of the few devices made at a very large scale for the consumer market, and only accidentally fell into the Radio community as a super cheap, super featured RX SDR.

Attention youtubers! This is how a video should be made!. To the point, condensed content, quality production over all, No ah"s, like's, or um's. Well done Tom!

I must say, this is one of the best presentation videos I have seen so far. Unlike most videos around that despite their title being a beginner's guide, yet you find yourself confused and lost not knowing how and where to start, this one is short, simple, and straight to the point. Well done for a great job

Clicked on this vid just because you were honest by putting “probably” in the title 👏🏻 unlike most other RU-vidrs

Tom I want to thank you, seriously thank you sir. I'm 60 and had a stroke back in 2015 which left me a little less sharp as I used to be. I was even a cable tv tech and splicer back in my days. Understanding this stuff has been a challenge but I'm slowly getting it back. Your video broke open like a stuck valve and all of the sudden things became real clear on some stuff I wasn't getting. You explain things very well and I wanted you to know how much I appreciated your video. Thanks and you have a new sub.

I saw this video for the first time in October 2022. Since then, I credit this video with: * me getting a scanner * getting my HAM license * several radio purchases * 2x pistar hotspots

Shows off over 3k worth of equipment, "those are all cool and all, but my favorite is this little guy." lol. I've been a technician for 5 years and still rocking the Baofeng. Great video bro. 73. KD8ZZP

I loved this type of stuff when I was in the Army. In the Army I was a computer IT specialist, but I also worked a lot with radios and satellite communication, especially when I was setting up internet connection for a base out in the middle of nowhere in the desert of Iraq. The satellite we connected to, believe it or not, was actually the same satellite that news networks like ABC, CNN and others use, and in the case of a HUGE emergency and I was given the order to do so, I actually had the ability to kick the news networks off it and take over the satellite for military use....lol. But what I think was the coolest thing, is that I was able to see the waveform for EVERY signal being sent through the satellite, everything from the signal floor where all the background noise is at that is mostly always there, to whatever signal was being pushed through it at the time. I didn't have the necessary things to view or listen to anything other then our own communications, but I could see the signals themselves such as which one was strongest, what frequency they were using, that sort of stuff.

I just stumbled on to your site. The way you presented the info was great. I've got an SDR and this is the first time someone explained the software that I could really understand. And the antenna explanation was really simple. Not even the manufacture of the unit made it as easy and clearly as you did. Thanks.

I am one of those in IT who loves to delve in other fields of knowledge, and I have to say that I had never watched someone deliver so much useful practical information, at such a decent depth, rate, and clarity on something relatively new to me. I am glad I found your channel. Thank you for sharing!

Tom, you are unbelievable. Thank you so much for the helpful info to turn my computer into a receiver of numerous radio signals never before known to me.

The RTL-SDRv3 is precisely what got me into amateur radio. Now, SDR is the most important piece of part of my station. Tied into my radio’s RF-out port, I can visualize exactly what my radio is hearing, across the entire band. I’ve since upgraded to the SDR Play devices and it has turned out to be an incredible investment. It’s all point and click in SDRuno or HDSDR. Click a blank spot during a contest to find a place to “park”, click a signal if you want to make some contacts, or search the signals against the POTA database to see which activations are within reach. Amazing!

You got me all hyped up with your great YT vid! Just ordered the RTL-SDR V3! Thanks!

Your honesty is refreshing. "I'm no expert on this, but this other guy is so set it up the way he says so you don't screw your stuff up." RU-vid would be incredible with more honesty like this. Thank you.

I used to build tube receivers, record Morse on a reel to reel,slow it down and decode it.That was many years ago. This tech is awesome.

I don’t remember how I stumbled on your channel but I don’t believe I have landed on a RU-vid channel where the host/presenter just gets on with it and doesn’t waste the viewer/listener’s time. You, to me are my new standard as to how to properly do a presentation. (obviously I have subscribed) Bravo! Cheers from Victoria, British Columbia

I've been doing this for a long time. I used it with plugins to listen to trunked Provoice (EDACS) systems. It worked wonders for years. I was in the Vancouver, B.C, Canada location. I am now in a small town (8500) in the British Columbia Interior. It's in the Thompson/Nicola area. A town called Merritt. We love it here. We are not that far from the whole city of Lytton that burnt up in a wildfire last Summer (2021). I've been into radio since 1964. I was 4 years old, and I built a crystal radio that I seen in a Popular Science/Mechanics magazine. I figured out by changing coil sizes, I could go into SW bands. I was addicted! I am now 62, and still going at it.

Sunday I watched HRCC about SDRs. Monday RU-vid sent me to this video. What a great, brief, snippet of the joy of SDR for this newbie HAM. It looks to me that SDR is how I bring my budding shack with my used radios within reach of 2022’s these newfangled and extremely useful waterfall displays. Thanks for a very functional and inspiring vid, Tom.

Extremely well presented video -- many YTers know what they know but are not adapt at communicating it, you, OTH, have a great presentation style. Keep it up!

Thank you very much for this. You popped up in my feed due to the mysterious ways of RU-vid. Your video was engaging and inspiring. And now I have one of these dongles and got it working. I followed the instructions on the online quick start guide and it worked absolutely fine. I got the FM channels dead easily and I also found some ATC and heard one end of a ham radio conversation. I'm looking forward to exploring more. My ambition is to tune in to UVB-76.

Not sure how I stumbled on this video but it was so cool! Never knew there was such a thing as a radio hobby. Got yourself a new subscriber!

WOW! So glad your post was recommended! I bought a RTL-SDR for school project and have it setup for FlightAware. I still keep it up on my TV when not actively using it for something else. I had no idea I could do so many more cool things with the RTL-SDR I already use. This is def going to be a weekend project. Thank you for sharing.

Great video, I’ve got every SDR, ham, scanner and cellular radio interceptor known to man, but I really love the way you produce and narrate your videos, awesome great job..!!

As a longtime ham, I’ve always thought of SDR as expensive huge clunky, though powerful, devices. I had no idea how much things have changed. I’ll be picking one up once I can find one that includes the antenna like yours (even the eBay link is out of stock now).

What a video, clean crisp, no nonsense,fast and to the point, this is the way it's done right

Nicely presented... Thanks for sharing this. I remember exploring radio bands as a kid (I had a 4-channel crystal handheld , in fact, and remember my dad using Radio Shack tube testers when I was really young... lol). Police/fire, railroads, atc... even AM skip... It only became worse when I entered radio in '83 and spent nearly 15 years at different stations off and on... As if I reeeeally needed another 'rabbit hole' to dabble with today... pffft... lol Love the technology we have today, though I do miss some of the old stuff (fewer and fewer people remember the smell of dust burning off hot tubes these days lol).

Your videos are those among the few channels I watch, where I hit the Thumbs Up button before I even watch the video. Because I already know I'm going to like it. Another awesomely informative video, thanks for the upload Tom!

Thanks for posing this. When I was a kid I had a very old SW radio that I used to listen to worldwide radio stations on (long before the internet), and had a great time with. I heard of SDR recently, then filed it in the back of my mind. You reminded me that I wanted to look into this, and I am ordering an SDR system right now!

After watching your presentation, which was well presented, I went an ordered my RTL-SDR I already have a Sony ICF-SW7600GR, but this SDR looks and works so awesome, I couldn't resist! Thank you.

Great video. I've been using ssr for years now and it's just amazing. You can even listen to and decode police, fire and ems digital radio. Also the mention about screwing up your computer drivers is very true. If you do it wrong you may just discover you can't use your mouse or keyboard. It's nothing that will permanently damage anything but it's rather annoying.

I have used RTL-SDR tuners for several years now. I have used it to monitor many different things. Some of the things I find coolest are more of the digital uses. One such use is ADS-B, which allows you to track aircraft. As to listening to public safety communication, more and more public safety entities are going to digital trunked radio systems. In the past, most public safety agencies were using traditional FM radio transmissions. Each channel requires a unique frequency; with a repeater, it is two frequencies per radio talk channel. If you need more channels, you will need many more frequencies. The chances of each frequency being used for a city simultaneously is pretty low, but a city or county is going to need several police talk groups, many fire talk groups, including numerous tactical groups. You also have parks and recreation, animal control, street maintenance and any other service you can think of that wants to communicate on the radio. This quickly escalates. With a digital trunked radio network, you can have a system with 5-30 frequency pairs for hundreds, if not thousands of unique talk groups. If the audio is already a digital signal, you can easily add encryption and it makes absolutely no difference in the audio quality for the end user, albeit, with an SDR you can't hear it. I have been using SDRTrunk (github.com/DSheirer/sdrtrunk) to listen to my city's radio network. I have also used the same software to feed the audio to Broadcastify, so people that do not have such a setup can take advantage of my SDR radio. Yes, there are radio scanners that can listen to these systems, BUT SDRTrunk is far superior than a much more expensive dedicated digital trunk-tracking scanner. Why? Because with the scanner, you can only hear one conversation at a time. With my setup, I can listen to all I want to listen and I will never miss any traffic. Broadcastify has two different platforms for sharing and listening and I simultaneously provide audio to both platforms with SDRTrunk. One plays all police primary channel audio and all fire talkgroups. If two are broadcasting at the same time, one platform will cache the audio until the conversation is finished and then play the cached audio. The other Broadcastify platform is the new Calls platform. This allows the listener to choose which talkgroups they wish to listen to, not just one audio stream. If there is an exciting fire incident and you don't want to be interrupted by an unrelated report of a neighbor complaint on the police primary channel, you can choose to only listen to fire traffic.

Some radio restoration people use these as signal analyzers to help with their alignment & calibrating a sets RF & IF transformers. Now I know how to do this on the cheap too. Thanks

Tom you are a natural teacher/leader. Excellent job explaining what I once thought of as a complicated subject.

Very gracious of you to assemble all this for us, thanks! I never know it existed, now I want to try it out. Cheers

From a Lisle, IL resident I really enjoyed your video. I have had the SDR dongle for a year but have not had the time I would like to play with it. I hope to catch the local municipal depts. when I get better at using it.

You can also use a Raspberry Pi with an SDR dongle, for a neat, ultra-compact setup!

Very well done. I know all of this as an experienced radio guy, yet i was hooked. Nice job.

Back when I was a high school student, I got one of my dad's old Heathkit general receivers working again. That radio was a little bit older than me and I remember picking up AFRS with it. I still have a Heathkit, not the same one, and a Realistic DX-440 but I'm in a condo and have no room for a proper antenna. I just bought one, too.

Been wanting to try an SDR but felt intimidated. This video convinced me to try it out. Saved it for another viewing later and will follow the instructions. Thanks much!!!!

You have a fantastic presentation style, Thanks. Love you're workshop too.

I had an old book of mine in my hand the other day - SOS at midnight form Walker A. Tompkins -, one of my childhood's favorites that made me dream and inspired me a big time, and I felt myself rehooked right away! I ordered an SDR the same minute. Thanks for introducing!

Thank you for this video. I am not too much of a radio hobbyist, but I always liked listening to a scanner I found in my basement. This SDR setup is definitely an upgrade. Almost immediately bought one on pay day this week. Already having tons of fun with it. I live near Chicago as well, so bonus points for that 😅😅

Well done Tom! Great information on how to get started with a SDR. Liked, subscribed and looking forward to your content.

Very interesting, cheers! Didn't know these things existed until yesterday, may dip my toes in. I have to say you are a ringer for a young Orson Welles :)

Tom, I gotta admit man, you may be the smartest dude I've ever seen on YT. And I watch a lot of YT DIY videos, true crime, documentaries, just a lot of stuff. This was a fantastic video dedicated to something other than mugging for the camera and showing how to do your nails or make up. Bravo man.

For your intended scope of SDR I think you did a great job of being able cover a fair amount without getting way off base or wasting time. I think you are a YT natural. Cheers

wow. amazing delivery. you're 100% going to have a successful channel. :-)

Cheers - stumbled on your site and this was an interesting topic - made me a subscriber too!

Great video, and got my interest all over again. I was really into this in the 80s and 90s and my Sony 2010 works like it always did. I spent hours on it and a couple of scanners, but now this takes it to the next level and I'm going to have to buy that little gadget and get the software! Thank you!

Hey Tom, thanks for a great little intro! When I would be out ocean kayak touring on the coast, I would have the VHF weather report going... funny how relaxing I found that. What a great price point to tinker with.

You HAVE whetted my appetite indeed, good sir.

Thanks for sharing this info. In the 1960's when I was a kid I had a multi-band shortwave radio and it had all of those types of frequencies and I remember way back then I paid over $100 for that radio. For less than $40 you showed me I can use a usb device to do the same thing. Amazing! Now I can revisit my old hobby.

We used to do this in the early 2000's when the waves for dishing out and changing in Mississippi and Pennsylvania with our toughbooks. Came in handy on deployments. I still have a great SDR ant. Cost me $11.99 back in the day. Every Com Operator needs one. Love it.

The SDR is a remarkable gadget! It has made most of the radio spectrum accessible to anyone with a computer 🖥.

Thank you Tom for the SDR receiver stuff. I've been on Ham radio for about 40 years and have tried almost everything WB6TA. Now that I am house bound and all caught up with Netflix, this looks like something fun..

I remember back when I was reading about directional antennas for wi-fi (look up "cantenna" and "war driving" for reference), the info I found sounded like the 'weakest link' of a typical external WiFi antenna setups was the coaxial cable between the antenna and the (WiFi) transciever. For instance, from what I read, connecting an external antenna to your computer's WiFi adapter using 15 feet of a common coax type used for WiFi (LMR100) loses roughly 6 dB of the signal picked up by the antenna. Since each 3dB of signal loss roughly cuts signal strength in half, this 15 feet of this particular cable type only delivers about 25% of the signal captured by the antenna to the WiFi adapter. In the event that a setup like the one used in this video leaves one or more desired transmitters simply too weak to pick up with this radio, you might want to try replacing the coaxial cable with a $6 USB extension cable (A-male to A-female) which will allow you to move the dongle closer to the antenna, and allowing you to connect the antenna directly to the USB dongle (simply getting rid of the coax cable in between). Even if this does not allow you to listen to radio signals that were too weak before, a USB extension cable like this will most likely exert less mechanical stress on your computer's USB port than a big, fat dongle does over time, and will be less likely to block access to adjacent USB ports on the same computer. If you've ever had a USB port on a laptop become useless after using a big dongle with it over time, you know how much leverage a long dongle like that can exert on a USB port that is anything but simple to replace for most people.

This is EXCELLENT!!! Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I can't wait to get started!

What an incredibly well-made video about something I had never heard of! I gotta get one.

These are truly awesome devices. Monitoring my gas and water meters in real time is nice. Sniffing smart electric meters is a whole other level though. The confidence of new radio folks have in the antenna length formula always gives me a chuckle.

First time i watch this channel, I'm subscribing, he explains very well!

I find myself once again down a rabbit hole. My list of projects keeps growing :-). Thank you for the excellent content!

Just discovered this channel and subscribed. Really interesting topic. Going to buy this SDR and get started.

SDR is a wonderful thing. The moment I've learned about people downloading SSTV images from the International Space Station I set myself a new challenge of learning about radio and build my own antenna. My first antenna was a QFH antenna which I still use to listen to ATC, track flights through ADSB, download weather images from NOAA satellites and occasionally, if there's an event, download images from the ISS. RTL-SDR is a wonderful little dongle. I really recommend a HackRF for more experienced users.

The visualization of all frequencies in itself is mindblowing to see.

Oh My Gods. This is amazing! Thank you for introducing me to SDR. I have long been a scanner enthusiast but have not spent the money to replacer my scanner nor time to find all the frequencies around me that I am interested in. Radio reference is an an excellent resource too!

Thanks, as someone just starting to take interest in ham radio and considering getting licensed, I found this video extremely helpful. I've just been trying to play around and learn by using a Baofeng to receive. Each book or video I've looked into for getting a Technician license just uses a "memorize the question pool answers" approach; but I don't just want to pass a test. I want to understand what I'm doing, why, and how it works. Watching this video gave me the idea that I could use this SDR setup as a sort of learning sandbox. I can make sense of all the nuance a lot faster if I can see visualizations of what I'm doing instead of only being able to listen.

I learned something today. A good way to end a Friday.

I am absolutely getting into this. Thank you for this highly informative and excellent video!⚡️💚⚡️🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟👍🏻🍻💻 📻

Great video. It definitely sparked my interest. Lots of information presented in a professional and easy to follow manner. Thank you.

Well done video Sir! You took a complex topic and made it easy to comprehend and understand. I definitely will be saving this video! 👍

Glad your channel showed up in my feed, really good info! Nicely presented. (gonna explore your other videos) I'm a ham and engineer and you touched on everything that's important, including getting the antenna tuned for the frequencies your interested in. I was wondering if you would go over that detail, I was pleased you did. At <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="510">8:30</a> on the station your tuned into on the right side of the spectrum, you can clearly see the digital sidebands of that station, broadcasting HD Radio, or IBOC. With those flattop signals with the FM carrier between the two. The other FM's in view don't have a hybrid digital signal included. Unfortunately the software can't tune into the digital HD Radio signals, mostly because of licensing issues.. I suspect there is professional software that could, but never looked into it. These SDR dongles are quite flexible, as one of the comments below says, you can monitor aircraft ADSB transponders with the same exact dongle, just different software!

I'm getting one! I'm taking the Technician exam next week and currently have the FT-3DR handheld. As a Chicago native, I'm glad to see you're holding up: I was in elementary school at the time of the 1967 blizzard.

I recently ordered the RTL SDR Blog V3 after a few tries with downloading the software I finally got it set up but I was having problems with the USB extension which didn't allow the dongle to work. I replaced the USB extension plugged in the dongle and it worked! I was inspired by your video to try this out, got some learning how to operate the radio but that's all part of the fun, thanks to your video!

My first time seeing one of your videos. I never heard of SDR. You got me interested. Thanks for the good information!!

That was an enjoyable and approachable presentation. Bravo. Even though part of my career involves tracking semiconductor trends, the thought that you can get a complete SDR, that small, ready to use, that can hit 1.7GHz for $40 just blows my mind. I've been doing SDRs for 1/3 century, but not everyone has my experience. One of my MSEE projects was a direct synthesis tuner up to 1 GHz (child's play, today, but back in 1989 it took a custom chip in an exotic technology called "ECL logic" to achieve the 3GHz clock needed. In 1989 CMOS was a "cute" low power technology that wasn't really fast enough to do much of anything) so $12 in 1980 money for twice that bandwidth without a stack of 12x9 inch PC boards and a 100W power supply is just incredible. For me, it's always easier to accept dramatic progress in fields I haven't worked in. Electric vehicles and autonomous cars going mainstream? Sure! SDR, speech recognition, or portable computers going from $5,000, 25lb, power-sucking boxes to $30, pocket sized, battery-powered devices? How? I worked on that: you "need" a lot of stuff to make it work!

I have an RTL-SDR like yours ($35) and had SDR# installed and all working beautifully. Windows had an update today and installed a nice RTL2832U driver for me; Microsoft is so good at these things. It took me hours to get it working again. The good news: 1. I’ve wanted the new version of SDR# anyway since I saw yours and 2. Now I’m real good at installing SDR#.

You describe and explain in detail and make it simple to understand. Thank you. 🙂

Thanks for a great introduction to SDR! I bought a dongle years ago, never got it to work worth $#!7 and gave up. You've made it look achievable and provided specific brands and programs which is a huge help. I will definitely give it a shot. And BTW, do you happen to know whether this SRD combo is compatible to receive wsjt-x signals? That would be an even bigger bonus (although of course more complex than only listening to audio). Thanks again -- great job!

Some 15 years ago, maybe longer, I studied like crazy and passed my Ham Radio test (on my first try no less) as a "General" licensed user. I have never used a ham radio though, never spoken one word on the air. LOL I ordered this within the first 3 minutes of watching this video (right when the radio was shown) and then finished watching it. The presenter is very gifted. Subscribed and thumb up. Cheers

Thank you for this. Very interesting. I'll pass this to a family member who messes around with ham radios. By the way, ever heard of Radio Garden? You can listen to radio ( FM and such) by rotating the globe and select stations from different countries. Pretty neat!

The video is brilliant in two ways....how to get started but also why the metric system is so brilliant.

Great! Something else I didn't know I wanted....thanks a bunch!!

Never knew SDR existed before I saw this video. Great video presentation BTW. Looks like I'll have a new hobby soon!

Hi Tom, of the many different topics that i usually watch on RU-vid, this is one of my favorite topic. I used be an electronics hobbyist during my school days. It was a pleasure watching this video, very informative and very well articulated. Good video, great work and thanks a ton. Regards karunakaran.

Well done (clear, succinct, etc.). Thanks for taking the time.

That's really cool. My grandfather was really into Ham radio and I regret not learning about it before he passed in 2019.

You remind me of Orson Welles!! Wonderful voice and presentation 👏

Excellent presentation. Professional. Upbeat. Informative. Many years ago I worked at 5th group in a signal detachment. Your presentation reminds me of the 18E's who are commo masters. Great job! Thanks.

I have listened to many RU-vid videos. As to voice, presentation and easy to listen to, I found yours to be one of the best

I've been looking into SDR off and on for a couple of years, finally ordered a Nooelec NESDR Smart v4 bundle earlier today

I don't know why the Google algorithm dropped this in my feed but it is the best video I've watched in a while. Tom, your delivery is refreshingly direct, concise, and informative. I'm SO tired of videos that spend 12 minutes of noise to deliver 30 seconds of signal. Your signal-to-noise ratio was very satisfying and you *definitely* met your stated goal of whetting my appetite to dig deeper. Also, as other comments have stated, that live visualization of broadcast bands was revelatory. At 50+ years old, I've never seen it illustrated so well. Yes, I understand that was the software doing the work but, darn it, *you* shoved me down the rabbit hole. Keep up the good work, whole I head over to Amazon to start yet another new hobby.

I love the rabbit hole reference. Wonderful video. I started with a Nooelec Smart SDR. Now I have the Nooelec smart, Nooelec SmarTee XTR, 4 RTL-SDR v3's, MSi-SDR, Airspy Hf+ and a RSPduo. I have two RSP1A's and a HackRf One on the way. 4 antennas with splitters and 4 satellite dishes. I listen to the world, decode data and images from satellites, read messages meant for ships, track aircraft using ADS-b (local) and ADS-C (over the oceans), listen to emergency services on P25 trunking.... the list goes on.

I have no idea why this came up on my YT feed, but this is so cool and I'm going to get it. thanks.

As an extra class operator and a Ham for 20 years, that is out right the best intro SDR radio I have ever seen - I have had no desire to play with SDR, but this is a true game changer. I'll buy one for GP.

Impressive and concise presentation. You should be getting offers for TV, and Radio. You are a skilled presenter. Great work.

This was an unexpected algorithm spurred gem. Clear presentation, detailed, interesting, well paced. New fan. And I'll sub.

Love your channel....found it suddenly and glad I did.

This reminds me of when I had a scanner, before everything was scrambled and encrypted. Cell phones, even cordless home phones, were receivable.