i have SDR, should I scrap analogue scanner?

I have a Realistic 2021 someone gave me, it works fine... although I dont feel like learning to program it... this thing basically operates from 30 or 50 mhz to 500mhz....

I am always looking for RF parts to make SDR front end add ones, I have 2 dongles one of the newer ones with the RT80T2 and one of the originals plus a bunch of trashed dongles from experimentation. Anyways is there any reason not to open up the Realistic for parts when I have dongles? Are these old analog desktop scanners good for anything now.....

Put a discriminator tap on in and download DSDPlus to decode digital systems, works great. I have an old Realistic 20/20 with a tap, you can't beat the reception you get compated to a dongle..

Well i have an lna4all and usually use custom antennas outdoors, are you telling me that realistic will get better reception than a dongle with a dipole/discone/collinear and an lna? Can you if tap any radio like that, like a sw reciver?

moonbounce said:

Put a discriminator tap on in and download DSDPlus to decode digital systems, works great. I have an old Realistic 20/20 with a tap, you can't beat the reception you get compated to a dongle..

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Im with Moonbounce Tap that baby and use it for digital work i use mine for weather Sats to download weather sat photos when the sat is over head,enjoy the world of unfiltered Audio LOL..........

moonbounce said:

Put a discriminator tap on in and download DSDPlus to decode digital systems, works great. I have an old Realistic 20/20 with a tap, you can't beat the reception you get compated to a dongle..

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This should help you out, if it doesn't just google " discriminator tap for the Realistic pro 2021.

Discriminator Output PRO-2021

Ive seen all the tap stuff, one guy was using it on an hf sdr to get hi bands. What im not understanding is if a dongle covers its rangs plus more, what advantage does tapping it give me in this situation. What does the realistic have over the dongle, my dongles are in copper boxes with tcxo's and a bunch of common mode filtering and better voltage regulators.

SDR / Analog scanner

Just a few coments......

While the 2021 doesn't do digital as is, it is still a solid analog scanner. It will work without a PC, will have a better front end in the bands it covers and is very modifiable (ref Bill Cheeks books 1 & 2). If I remember correctly, it even has a one key WX search. A lot easier to check a few frequencies with it, do a range search, or monitor the local WX, WHILE you play with the PC /Dongle. Did I mention that you don't need a PC to run it? :<)

The tap will allow you to do several of the digital modes. It is a good compliment to the Dongles you are using,

I would not hack it up for parts (unless it doesn't work and it is beyond repair).

$.02

You can use that scanner to monitor ham radio, railroads, civil aviation, military aviation, taxis, GRS/FRS/MURS, etc. etc.

So yes, keep the scanner. SDR doesn't scan like a scanner does.

SDR is fun, but when the power goes out because of a storm, a handheld scanner (or one that can be powered by batttery) is indespensable.

When Sandy blew through, I was without power for 3 weeks. No phone, cell towers went dead, no internet. I did have a scanner, and a Wouxun kg-uvd1p. both that I could charge from the cig lighter in the car, and a portable AM/FM.

tl;dr: You can never have too many different kinds of radios for different situations.

No .. SDR's are not scanners. In fact .. they do poorly as scanners.

Don't know about your particular model .. but SDR's are not going to perform as well as your scanner. End of Story.

Desktop vs. SDR

Although SDR is the future of radio, never cast off the traditional radios as they'll always serve a purpose when your PC is down.

edmscan said:

No .. SDR's are not scanners. In fact .. they do poorly as scanners.

Don't know about your particular model .. but SDR's are not going to perform as well as your scanner. End of Story.

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Not sure how you came to that conclusion... My SDRs with OP25 outperform my scanners. I still have my scanners, but I wouldn't say that they are the end all.

SDR dongles work well, and logging to a computer is pretty easy, but then so is BcTools and my Uniden BCT-15.

Older scanners are still very useful, often times for Marine VHF and aviation monitoring. SDR still has to play catch up unless you spend more money on an Icom PCR-1000 or something of that nature, (WinRadio is another good one.)

I find that my old Pro-2006 still gets a lot of use for local PUD, aviation and the like even with SDR in use also.

Yes, get rid of it. I'll PM you my address.

Ok so first of all I looked in to bill cheeks books, I don't have cash for them and they cover tons of scanners so im not sure if it would be very relevant to my situation. Although they would make an interesting thumb through i am sure.

I would never buy a digital scanner, no need.. two SDR dongles can scan and follow trunking... along with easily decoding digital modes.

Now if I plug this analog scanner in to my LNA4ALL broadband preamp and custom antenna, and your telling me I will have better dynamic range, im with you guys I will keep the thing and and add a battery power conversion to it. Having it portable is what makes a difference I look at my dongles as portable with a laptop.

What I dont understand about the discriminator tap is am I just piping audio out or IQ signals? The site doesn't show what connector is on the end of the tap.... I did see a video where a guy in Australia tapped the 10.7mhz IF before the filtering, using my exact 2021. He then piped that tap in to sound card based WINRADIO brand HF SDR and was able to use SDR software in the higher bands through the scanner. So is there a way I can just get the RAW IQ signal to an audio jack and then use things like GNU Radio and RFCat to demodulate and brute force digital signals, which is possible with an SDR. Or is the point of the discriminator to pipe in the digital audio and then use software to decode it?

This is way of topic but I got this old 73 FET based SW Toshiba radio from the swap meet, I wanted a SW receiver forever but RatShack charges ALOT and im not even sure what I would pick up where I live, there is only one AM channel! I mostly want one as a piece of test gear if I can SWL that would be great too! The problem is the thing wont tune in anything on any band... I havent cracked it open yet I had planned on fixing it but.... am I better off scrapping it and getting something like this Am FM SW1 8 10 Band High Quality Shortwave Radio World Receiver New | eBay. I guess im not sure if the old school radio will work better or a new Chinese POS is the way to go.

You wont get IQ out of an analogue scanner. You'll get whatever is in the IF at that time. It's unadulterated RF.

It really depends on what you use a scanner to accomplish. If you use it to seek out frequencies to analyze, then the SDR is a better tool. If you just like to listen to radio traffic from multiple sources without much effort and with some speed, then the scanner is a better tool.

Flatliner said:

You wont get IQ out of an analogue scanner. You'll get whatever is in the IF at that time. It's unadulterated RF.

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Yes Flatliner is right all you will get is unfiltered and unadulterated RF output......

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pBlChNwNkjE

This video shows a guy using a 2021 with if tap, as and down converter for his hf sdr. He is able to see the rf in his sdr program... so is there a way for me to pipe the tap in to a dongle with up converter that supposrts 10.7 mhz?

Now forgetting the sdr stuff once i tap the if what do i do with that? Do i use the scanner to control frequency and then pipe the tap in to my sound card and use software to demodulate input from the mic/line in??

The IF (10.7 MHz in this case) is what the radio generates so the rest of the circuits (filters, demodulators etc.) don't have to be constantly retuned. The available bandwidth will be whatever you're tuned to. For example, if the IF has a 50 kHz bandwidth, then, suppose you are listening to 100 MHz, then the IF would output whatever is at 100 MHz +- 25 kHz, but at 10.7 MHz instead. You only need to tap that RF then feed it to an SDR. You can use an upconverter, with a dongle, or simpler, get an SDRplay RSP. You then just tune to 10.7 MHz. You read the frequency on the scanner.

I think I've simplified this enough, but I'm happy to explain further.