Carl Laufer isn't a ham (yet), but he got caught up in the RTL-SDR craze in his home town, Auckland NZ, as he was completing his PHD. He began writing about them, and selling them, on his blog at www.RTL-SDR.com, and soon discovered that the little SDR receiver dongles could stand some improvement. So he designed ways to make them work better, and contracted a Chinese manufacturer to build them with his mods. That just about doubled the price, from $10 to about $20. Yeah, big deal. TAPR invited Carl to come to the 2017 Dayton Hamvention to talk about them at both their Friday Forum (part of HamRadioNow Episode 324) and as the main speaker at the TAPR/AMSAT Banquet. And we got him for a conversation with HamRadioNow's KN4AQ and PhasingLine's Chicken With Fries in the SIB back in Tent City. Podcast listener's celebrate: this is another talking-head show with just a few graphics to spoil the perfect score. Makes you wonder why Gary even bothers with the cameras, doesn't it? Radio Rating: A+. DOWNLOAD/LISTEN
It should be mentioned that what enables the RTL-SDR to be such a useful device (outside of its original closed source TV use), is the handy work of Antti Palosaari, Eric Fry and Osmocom, who crafted the open source driver. Carl's website does give the history / credit: http://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/ In my opinion, someone ought to applaud the efforts of http://osmocom.org/, and encourage more of that sort of thing.
I purchased an RTL-SDR at the Hamvention TAPR booth and am using it now. I purchased it because it was the latest (v3) and I thought I'd be able to use it on HF frequencies. Carl cautioned me about having local FM stations closeby, but I took the chance anyway. The FM stations are a little bothersome, but I can get by with it. I am running it with HDSDR and using it as a panadapter for my Icom 7300. Truthfully this small purchased has convinced me to go out and buy something better. For me it was worth the investment. You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. Nice clip and thank you for putting it on.
A FM trap/ band-stop filter isn't very expensive and should take care of the high power FM stations nearby. Radio Shack (sigh) used to even sell them.
OR, you could cobble up some filtering and/or a trap on your own. There is usually an ARRL radio handbook at most local libraries.
I have an RTL2832U that used to work with SDR#. Air Spy has disabled the driver for this in the latest version. I gave my notebook computer to my sister that was setup for monitoring local aviation VHF AM radio and I can't find SDR# that will work with the RTL2832U. All links wind up at Air Spy. HDSDR is fine for a panoramic adapter but not too good for a scanner. It's a clever way for Air Spy to sell their $95 dongle. Make sure you find software for the cheap dongles before you get too excited about the $20 units. All the applications I tried were inferior to SDR# and I would need to write a TCP/IP script to enable the RTL dongles for SDR#. Zadig is not working any more. AF4RK
Hi, I am new to the RTL-SDR and I bought one of the v3 dongles at the Hamvention and got SDR# working. I don't use SDR#, but it seems to work. From the dropdown list it shows a Generic RTL2832U. What is different with yours? Am I missing something here?
I just got my dongle today 6/19/17 and downloaded the software from airspy and installed it according to the instructions on rtl-sdr.com and it worked just fine.
Just curious, are you picking up FM or AM broadcast stations in HF Amateur frequencies? I have a couple of local stations that show up. It's annoying.
Not so far in my limited check of 40-10 meters. Most of the commercial stations are on the other side of town.
