WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

This is an RTLSDR dongle. It's a cheap USB DVB-T adaptor.
Community Subreddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/

However, it is capable of far more than TV!
It can scan from 77MHz to 1.7GHz!
Load up the right software (works best in Linux or Mac), and you can scan everything! For $15!




The antenna I have attached I bought at the local IGA, and soldered to the antenna cable. It apparently works from 88Mhz to 860 Mhz, and seems to be a great improvement over the bit of coat hanger that I had lying around.


When it's all working, you can just load up your favorite SDR software (GQRX for my Linux box), and TADA! A full waterfall:

Lots of talk in this thread as well http://warsug.info/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=12091

Oh! Cool! I'm happy to see I'm not the only one taking advantage of these cheap and powerful devices.

I've got one of these dongles plugged into my HTPC and connected to our TV antenna on the roof.

I have tried monitoring ADS-B signals, but the TV antenna isn't so good for that. In the 30 minutes or so I was tuned to the frequency it only detected 1 aircraft, whereas there were lots around the place according to FlightRadar24.

Does anyone have suggestions of things I could tune into that may work well via a standard roof TV antenna?
I don't have any way of using any other sort of antenna that is outdoors, so the best I could do would be to mount something indoors.

Any tips? I'm just getting started and have only had the dongle about a week.

I have found the standard antenna to be good, i have tried it with a scanner antenna but i still prefered the standard one to be better

Just buy a cheap $10 antenna like the one in my picture. It picks up everything from 88 to 800 or so Mhz, so for $10, you have a good setup.

You'll need a soldering iron and electrical tape for the inner core, and then use foil to keep the shield intact over the soldered area.

roland985 wrote:Just buy a cheap $10 antenna like the one in my picture. It picks up everything from 88 to 800 or so Mhz, so for $10, you have a good setup.
You'll need a soldering iron and electrical tape for the inner core, and then use foil to keep the shield intact over the soldered area.

What did you need to solder? My USB dongle has a full sized TV antenna RF connector, so I could buy something like this and simply plug it straight in.

Bonez wrote:
What did you need to solder? My USB dongle has a full sized TV antenna RF connector, so I could buy something like this and simply plug it straight in.

Mine had a small connector that did not accept the full TV PAL connector. No need to solder anything if that is the case.

The one I got also had a small connector, but I just purchased that small connector to BNC pre-made adapters from eBay for a few dollars each.

I attack all cables like an ape. If I need something done I'll kludge a solution together.