RTL SDR Success Day 1

Well after getting everything connected I had a little bit of success.

I came across some blips on the spectrum, looked the frequency up on google and found that it was a pager signal (POSCAG). Another quick search on google for some decoding software and I hit on PDW. The picture shows PDW (top) and HDSDR on the bottom).

I'm debating wether or not to put a Diamond X30 2m/70cms co linear up in the loft and use this as my sdr antenna as it basically covers upto about 500mhz. The NewSky TV28T covers from 20mhz to 1800 Ghz) any comments welcome.

NewSky TV28T dongle and antenna

Here is a picture of the Pc USB Tv Dvb dongle that has the RTL2832U chipset and also has the E4000 tuner chip needed to run as a SDR dongle. Also the Miniscan scanner antenna aerial

RTL SDR

Well after reading up that certain PC usb TV DVB dongles were found to be able to be used as SDR's I took the plunge (as we are radio experimenter's aren't we :) and bought the Netsky TV28T Pc Tv Dvb USB dongle from eBay for £10 !!! Much cheaper than the Funcube dongle at £140.

Now, remembering I'm a total newby to amateur radio thanks to google I was able to get the dongle up and running under HSDR and SDR# within about an hour. I connected it to my SRC HF 360 antenna (80m-6m) but didn't see too many blips on the spectrum analyser so have ordered a scanning antenna that works on the freqs the dongle works at ( about 60mhz - 1.8ghz )

Special Callsign : Queens Jubilee Year

Special Callsign : from 00.00 BST 5 May 2012 to 23.59 BST 10 June 2012 i will be using the callsign MQ6ODC in recognition of the Queens Jubilee.

The log will be held here and updated daily.

To recieve one of my cards there are 2 options (SWL's also welcome to request a card)...

Option 1. Send your card to me (include your address) and i will send one in the post.

Option 2. if your not sending your card but would like one of mine please send a S.A.S.E and i will get it off to you.

73 Glenn MQ6ODC (M6ODC)

ARISSat-1/KEDR SSTV Signal

After checking the latest prop conditions (not been good here) and seeing the A index high and the K index low i saw a link to the Amsat website. After a quick browse thru i saw that it was possible to hear and recieve SSTV image from the satellite...

I connected up my 2m aerial into my Yaesu FT 897D and tuned to 145.950 and fired up MMSSTV and here is the the first pass pic i recieved.

It was recieved at 3:50pm on Sunday 4th Sept 2011 and i cant wait for a closer pass to hopefully get a readbale picture.

Back at it...

After a few boring months recovering i am slowly getting back to the radio :) with the last few days running WSPR (http://wsprnet.org/drupal/) to check the radio is sending and recieving ok.

Here is a picture of my trace on 20m @ 1watt for 2-3 hours! to see where i can be heard and who i can hear back.

WSPR 20m @ 1watt

No Activity

Hi,

Nothing much happening radio wise at the moment as I have Shingles :(

I'm currently on a course of anti viral's and hoping I will start to feel better soon...

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