SDR# Scanning

[N1XDS]

I'm going to be using SDR for the time being and was wondering for you guys and ladies who uses SDR for scanning Military on VHF/UHF frequencies and satellite frequencies do any of you run a pre amplifier between the RTL stick while scanning Military air?

 

[slicerwizard]

It would probably be a good idea.

 

[N1XDS]

It would probably be a good idea.

Would it be worth getting a pre amplifier when I'm using the SDR# program when listening Mil Air frequencies and Satellites? I was told by couple of people it work fine and some say it won't it'll overload the RTL stick.

 

[kb6hlm]

In the GHz range yes absolutely as those signals are way to weak for any SDR to pick up however don't waste your money or time below that as it will only leave your dumbfounded and fooled into thinking its working when In fact its not unless of coarse you have a Yagi Antenna and are looking for very week signals ? and if you do pick up something with a SDR below the GHz range with a preamp that you cant without I would love to hear about it I have some very $$$ ones with excellent specs and find the pre amps worthless below 1 GHz


Maybe its just me LOL

 

[kb6hlm]

wanted to add one more thing here just to satisfy my own curiosity I just hooked up a wideband preamp to a 17 element beam up 40 feet using a SDR (wont name brands here) but the are not cheap ! and the only thing it did was bring up my noise level on the VHF/UHF Bands and the SNR went way down just the opposite as what it should do I don't have the problem with real radios just the SDRs howeaver seems to work fine on satellites from 1.5 to 1.9 Ghz like night and day

Anyone else have this problem ?

BTW Yes I did try puting the SDR and preamp at the antenna and with same results maybe even worse, I'm also using 50 ft LM400 coax with N connectors

 

[slicerwizard]

Would it be worth getting a pre amplifier when I'm using the SDR# program when listening Mil Air frequencies and Satellites? I was told by couple of people it work fine and some say it won't it'll overload the RTL stick.

Do it.

 

[N1XDS]

Do it.

So far picking up lot more commercial air pilots coming through the area and distant. I'll try the Military/Satellite frequencies tomorrow.

 

[slicerwizard]

Called it.

 

[N1XDS]

Called it.

Easy question to answer..On the Moonraker M-100 preamplifier it has three bands I can select which is selector a is for 225 - 1500..selector b is for 108 - 185 and selector c is for 24 to 2300. The selector a is what I need to selector for military air?

 

[N1XDS]

So far after using the Moonraker M-100 preamplifier and replacing my SDR stick with the RTLSDR RTL2832 U DVB-T tuner dongle v3 I'm picking up more pilots and satellites.

 

[Ubbe]

Any pre-amp that doesn't overload in itself and has a lower Noise Factor than the SDR stick, which is always terrible, will increase reception. But you have to attenuate the signal from the pre-amp to give someting like 6-10dB gain and you have to carefully adjust the SDR sticks gain to not get any overload problems. If you look at a SDR# spectrum you'll see that little spikes usually rises up at different frequencies when overload sets in when you receive a strong signal frequency.

I can run full gain in a pre-amp when using a narrow 1090Mhz bandpass filter and will more than double the range to airplanes. The more you can restrict the frequency range using filters the better it will be. Get a pre-amp that has great specs for IP3 and NF of 1.0 or lower. I have great results from pre-amps that use a PGA103+ amplifier IC. There are different sources to get them from on Ebay.
PGA103+ Ultra Low Noise Wideband LNA preamplifier RTL SDR HAM Radio | eBay

/Ubbe