We just booked a SE Asia cruise on the Viking Orion next year. I am planning on taking something like an SDR-RTL. Other than my small laptop and the RTRL-SDR, I do not plan on taking any other radio stuff as we both pack with only carry on's, even for a 15 day trip like this. Therefore I am not going to take up space with my SDR-100, etc.. Does anyone have any recent experience on this ship and have some knowledge with respect to the various wireless communication systems? I have heard many ships now use digital trunking systems and even cell phone type systems so, if that is the case, I probably won't even bother with the SDR-RTL. I am thinking it might be interesting to listen in on docking/un-docking & port related underway ops. Of course, I am assuming, maybe incorrectly, these communications use English.
Viking Orion SE Asia
- Thread starter N4IFE
- Start date
Freemor
Member
You may have already done so but you definitely want to check the local regs. Some places have fairly strict laws around radios and having the wrong type might get it confuscated or worse get you into legal hot water. Since an RTL-SDR can recieve such a broad range I could see it being a potential no-no in some countries.
ecps92
Member
Most of the Viking Ocean notes I have are DMR on the standard UHF pairings allocated
I did get some info, that I still need to add for the Orion, from 2022.07 but it was also DMR
BC_Scan
Member
when in Vancouver I obtained 457.4000 CC 2 , 457.525 CC 13 , 457.5375 CC14 only tg observed was 53 all in the DMR flavor (no trunk)
all in English , as well as the usual VHF Marine , for me packing like you do a hand held scanner is my prefered way to put multiple systems VHF , UHF, DMR etc etc etc all into logical banks I can find easily , dongle will do , but I am not aware of its capability as a scanner,
now going SE Asia might raise an eyebrow thru customs etc, check with your landing/departure country about bringing a scanner that is my MO
My thought is the RTL-SDR is receive only, if it is confiscated it so cheap it is of no matter, and, especially, it looks like a USB memory stick (except for the sma antenna connector) so it most likely will go unnoticed. I actually intend to use it with an older and small Kindle Fire but I have not yet tested it to see if it has enough horsepower for this application. Unfortunately and annoyingly there is no convenient way to use it with my M1 powered iPad as also taking a Raspberry Pi etc. to interface it well exceeds my threshold for taking toys with me. I actually prefer to take my SDR-100 but that thing is just too expensive to risk and it takes up a lot more space than the just an RTL-SDR. It will be 15 days aboard ship including a handful of all underway days so there will be plenty of non-interfering with the trip time to listen in on both ship and port ops.
