Best radio for Air band?

[Trucker700]

Yeha for giggles I went over to eBay to see what one could be had for... holy smokes, Batman!

And that price doesn't include tariffs fees either.

 

[Trucker700]

For a little fun today I dug out an RTL-SDR v3 dongle that I have had for quite some time. I hooked it up to an older Toshiba i7 laptop I have had for a while.
I had used it in the past with Airspy SDR# and had decent results. I had forgotten that I had setup SDR# according to a thread by MANCOW in the SDR software forum. I hooked up the RTL-SDR to my 130' dipole up 35' through a tuner ( in bypass mode) . This setup just smokes all of my scanners on Civil Airband. It would be an interesting project to make a portable setup using something like a Raspberry Pi to have a portable unit.
James

 

[Ubbe]

forum. I hooked up the RTL-SDR to my 130' dipole up 35' This setup just smokes all of my scanners on Civil Airband.

Antenna hight always wins over a lower placed antenna and size will also matter.

through a tuner ( in bypass mode) .

Does bypass mean its just works as a pass thru connector without any filtering or impedance matching?

/Ubbe

 

[Trucker700]

I have hooked my other scanners up to the same antenna and did have improved performance. As for bypass, there's a selection on the Antenna tuner that allows bypassing the internal matching network. I haven't bothered trying to find a match ( impedance) on Airband as I figure it's too far out of the range of the tuner. ( VHF Airband)
What really impressed me was the scanning speed. It is much faster than my scanners. I really need to put up a dedicated antenna for my scanners. I am in south Fort Worth Texas and there is a lot of activity, especially to and from, Dallas International Airport. And several other smaller airports. Plus the Joint Reserve Base. ( formally Carswell Airforce Base)
Plus, a lot of broadcast stations. Some of which ( FM mostly) cause some interference. I have a filter coming today that hopefully will reduce or eliminate that.
James

 

[Trucker700]

I need to add one more thing. Scanning speed is really the only difference I noticed between the RTL-SDR and my desktop scanners. Both my 436hp and the SDS200 scanning the built-in database pick up the same things as the RTL-SDR does. There's just a noticeable difference in scanning speed.
It's fun to play with for sure!
James