These cheap dongles are technically nothing more than the tuner in your TV. One of those old log type TV antennas re-mounted vertically is hard to beat. The downside is they tend to be directional. (sometimes a good thing)
The discone was designed as an omni-directional TV antenna and became popular in the scanner market.
Band specific, those droopy ground planes can be home made for about $10. Like the TV antenna, they are not much use unless mounted as if a TV antenna- outdoors, above the roof. One good part is one made for VHF also works well for UHF. The OC fed dipole suggested by ka3jjz works great. same thing though.(higher is better)
>>CABLE> TV coax works just fine but keep the length just for what is needed, longer means more loss.
TV and FM broadcast, you are hearing stations nearby and over 1 KW power. the fun stuff is like dialing in railroad, police and amateur and now you are talking much lower power, like talkies or 30 watt repeaters.
In this fact, adding a 'GOOD' LNA in line helps a lot.
Now these dongles do work, but they will never compare to a receiver made for the job.
They need all the signal you can gather or they don't hear it.
They have no filtering in the front end making interference and noise a real problem.
My RTL-SDR setup, I have come a long ways, from a discone on the roof into an LNA, then into a preselector with filtering and attenuation. I scavenged and built much of this and over time, maybe another $150 invested.
I use a couple different softwares, DSD+fastlane is not so expensive, but I do so much with it.
I really have little time to just sit and mess with it but do. Like you, not a primary hobby.
This setup also serves as bench test equipment working on radios. (a poor man lab)
