SDR Noob

[ToddWilkinson]

Just Received my 2 SDR's for SDRTrunk and Air Listening! My buddy from town has me pretty well covered but anyone else got tips or tricks or antenna guides?

 

[spongella]

General rule with antennas are outside's better, higher is better and look for an antenna with the best gain. For air monitoring (108 - 136 MHz) an omnidirectional antenna is best. Use good quality coaxial cable to ensure minimal signal loss. Have fun with your SDRs, they are a world of fun.

 

[Dirk_SDR]

Which SDRs did you buy?

 

[StoliRaz]

SDRs are fun...if you're a computer engineer 🤬I'm also a noob and I'm ready to use my 2 RTLs as door stops. Spending more time screwing with drivers and virual audio cables trying to get things to play nice together then Windows update screwing up everything isn't what I signed up for. I used to use them on my android phone and it was super easy. Introduce computers and it all goes to hell. Mindboggling how that works. <End rant>

Hope you have better luck than I'm having!

 

[ToddWilkinson]

Which SDRs did you buy?

Sdr-ltr V3 I believe

 

[spongella]

Sdr-ltr V3 I believe

Is it possibly the RTL-SDR V3? If that's the case, you picked one of the best, I've used them for many years before graduating to an AirSpy HF+ Discovery. They key is a good outdoor antenna. Some SDRs come with a tiny whip as an accessory, they're not useful for serious listening.

 

[Dirk_SDR]

Sdr-ltr V3 I believe

I asked, because it's important to know the exact type of SDR in order to get the best from it.
Here:

Buy RTL-SDR Dongles (RTL2832U)

Login to your account Where to Buy RTL-SDR RTL2832U DVB-T Tuner Dongles At RTL-SDR.com we sell significantly improved premium RTL-SDR dongles but keep our profits low and offer free shipping in order to maintain low retail pricing. We strongly believe that our V3 and V4 dongles are currently the...

www.rtl-sdr.com

... is a page to identify your sticks.
Are they original RTL-SDR Blog V3 sticks or copies?
You'll find out ...

 

[iowajm780]

Hang in there. When I got mine, I was so ticked off that I could not get anything to work. Thanks to the folks here and actually reading on how they work, they run great!!!

 

[DaWiz451345]

Ha! I finally got my RTL-SDR Today after weeks of waiting. I completely agree with @StoliRaz Windows drivers are so frickin hard to deal with. Fortunately I had linux already installed (dual-booted) along with with my windows machine. It was very easy to install as I just had to install certian packages and follow a guide on the rtl-sdr website. It was an amazing experience. Fortunately after hours of troubleshooting, I got the windows version to work as well. Why did it had to be so hard bruh.

 

[sonm10]

I saw this earlier this week and forgot to reply back

Myself, and several others have been using Unitrunker on ARMER. I also have Trunking Recorder setup to record from Unitrunker. You can setup for SDRTrunk, also, but I prefer Unitrunker.

If you are interested, you can join the Google Group for Unitrunker and download from there.
Trunking Recorder can be found here Trunking Recorder - Recording audio from trunked radio systems monitored by Unitrunker, SDRTrunk, and ProScan

 

[BM82557]

I saw this earlier this week and forgot to reply back

Myself, and several others have been using Unitrunker on ARMER. I also have Trunking Recorder setup to record from Unitrunker. You can setup for SDRTrunk, also, but I prefer Unitrunker.

If you are interested, you can join the Google Group for Unitrunker and download from there.
Trunking Recorder can be found here Trunking Recorder - Recording audio from trunked radio systems monitored by Unitrunker, SDRTrunk, and ProScan

Unitrunker Version 2 is now publicly available, see details in this post >> Unitrunker XML to Excel Conversion

 

[StoliRaz]

Ha! I finally got my RTL-SDR Today after weeks of waiting. I completely agree with @StoliRaz Windows drivers are so frickin hard to deal with. Fortunately I had linux already installed (dual-booted) along with with my windows machine. It was very easy to install as I just had to install certian packages and follow a guide on the rtl-sdr website. It was an amazing experience. Fortunately after hours of troubleshooting, I got the windows version to work as well. Why did it had to be so hard bruh.

Glad it worked out! I went back to using them on my phone. Just installed SDR++ and even that gave me issues with the app recognizing the dongle. It took forever to finally appear but it's running smooth now. I guess it's an Android USB read issue. The only downside to running it on android is there is no digital decoding option for it. One of these days I'll try getting it going on Windows again. I need a few weeks off or I'll go insane.

 

[dave3825]

Unitrunker Version 2 is now publicly available, see details in this post >> Unitrunker XML to Excel Conversion

Or see the announcement here

Unitrunker - Unitrunker 2.1

Version 2.1 of Unitrunker is available here: Version 2 Release 1 Preview 104 If you're still using version 1 with a discriminator tapped radio or computer controlled scanner - stay where you are. Discriminator oriented decoding isn't supported in version 2+. If you're still using version 1...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[ToddWilkinson]

I saw this earlier this week and forgot to reply back

Myself, and several others have been using Unitrunker on ARMER. I also have Trunking Recorder setup to record from Unitrunker. You can setup for SDRTrunk, also, but I prefer Unitrunker.

If you are interested, you can join the Google Group for Unitrunker and download from there.
Trunking Recorder can be found here Trunking Recorder - Recording audio from trunked radio systems monitored by Unitrunker, SDRTrunk, and ProScan

Im reformatting my PC rn, the install yesterday messed up my mouse, I got everything downloaded, got 2 dongles, Antenna kit, so hopefully I can get it done right, on top when it says toggle to choose sdr, that's where my issues arise!

 

[ToddWilkinson]

Well I go to activate the FIXED dongle and it won't start up, neither will for unitracker