Are these dongles any good?

[Phil]

I've not used my 10 year old RTL dongle for quite some time. It works on
VHF and HF, with an up converter, reasonably well but it's not very
sensitive.

So, inspired by a recent thread I search EBay and found this (see
attachment) and was wondering if it's worth buying?

--
Regards,
Phil

[Andrew Helgeson]

My mate and I bought one, VHF/UHF seems ok, but I've yet to get "squeek" out of HF.

I've gotten more reception on portable radio cassette units with the telescopic antenna!

which is a shame, because I was going to rip the guts out of a radio cassette and put the radio dongle, Pi3 and LCD screen in.

I've yet to try a decent HF antenna.

they seem ok, a bit noisy, might be better with a pre amp

--
Regards,
Phil

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[Phil]

On 15/05/18 18:40, Andrew Helgeson wrote:
> My mate and I bought one, VHF/UHF seems ok, but I've yet to get "squeek"
> out of HF.

Thanks for your reply Andrew. I'd buy an SDRplay device if I could
justify the cost.

--
Regards,
Phil

[AA0OI]

Hi Phil:

       As  I have just recently discovered the v-2 dongle does not work so well, The new V-3 works just fantastic.

Make sure you do what Alex said in the I/O devices.  I have just got it working right and it works fantastic (also the right antenna).  Make sure "Decimation" is set to 8 and change the "Device string" is set to "rtl=0,direct_samp=2"  (without quotes) input rate 2.4mps hardware AGC, LNA seem to do nothing,  to much gain makes it scratchy. Any question at all let me know I would be glad to help!

Garrett / AA0OI

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[righthal...@gmail.com]

   Hi Phi,

   Go for the SDRplay - I have a RTL dongle, SDRplay RSP1 and RSP2, HackRF One, and a NetSDR+. The RTL dongle with rtl=0,direct_samp=2, it picks up HF, but very poorly with WWV at 10 MHZ barely coming through and ghost signals everywhere.  The HackRF One is much better that the RTL dongle with WWV clear and  fewer ghost stations, but it is not in the same class as the other two. (Since they are both 8 bit, that indicates that my RTL dongle is a poor performer). I have the SDRplay ($120-12bit) on an antenna switch with the NetSDR+ ($1400-16bit). In the morning here are perhaps 20 international broadcast station around 6Mhz, the NetSDR+ will clearly hear one or two more stations than the SDRPlay, but on most stations you cannot tell the difference. I use the SDRplay most of the time - saving the NetSDR+ for when I want to search for very week stations.

Dale.

[AA0OI]

Hi Phil:

 First ,, no attachments (oops)

second,, if your rtl-sdr dongle is 10 years old its one of the v2 or even a 1.5.. They have come a long way in the past few years.. v3 ( the new one I just got works great- for 20 bucks) Both wwv's here in KY are 20 over 9 at least and bounce up to 35 at times.. Its not that I wouldn't want the more expensive one (7 times the cost) but if I wanted an expensive one I would have kept my FT990at or most of my other ham gear,, they kind of blow this stuff away..  But sense Alex got  a v3 and described the procedure for setting up gqrx on Pi.  There isn't much that would work this well for (20 dongle and 35 dollar Pi')  I have  HDSDR on main computer (running 5 ghz and the works inside)  it is now just slightly better than gqrx on a Pi. Big thing is antenna's antenna's antenna's, and then direction, direction, direction...

CUL

PS 6.7 to 7.0 is pirate territory, most of the unlicensed station from around the country hang out here. If you don't have it try the HF Underground.. They show times and who the different stations are and the times they are on.

I try to listen in everyday about3 pm to 6pm cst.  my opinion is that most are high school kids playing classic rock and country.HFU HF Underground - Index  when they get home from school,, fun to look at the reports and comments..

HFU HF Underground - Index HFU HF Underground - Index

   BUY BYE BY Bi !!

Garrett / AA0OI

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