Category: Amateur Radio

Receiving SSTV with RTL-SDR

Over on the Radio Antics blog fellow RTL-SDR enthusiast Andrew has been using the RTL-SDR to receive Slow Scan Television (SSTV) amateur signals. SSTV is a method ham radio enthusiasts use to send small images to one another. The images often contain their ham call sign overlaid on the image.

Andrew was able to receive several SSTV images using an R820T dongle tuned to the 27 MHz (11 meter) band. He also used a Funcube Dongle+ and got similar results.

Check out his post for some of the images he received, and his video below for an example of the receiving process.

STANAG 4285 Decoding with RTL-SDR

In this video YouTube user Superphish shows decoding of the French Navy STANAG 4285 test signal. He used an rtl-sdr, Ham-it-up upconverter, SDRSharp and a decoding program called Sorcerer. Watch in HD to read the text, though the text basically just repeats the French equivalent to the quick brown fox, “VOYEZ VOUS LE BRICK GEANT QUE J EXAMINE PRES DU GRAND WHARF” and some test symbols over and over.

Fair warning with the Sorcerer download: Some people report that their virus scanner detects a trojan on some Sorcerer download links. The Sorcerer link above seems to be clean though, as far as my virus scanner reports. An alternative decoder is Sigmira.

STANAG 4285 is the NATO standard for HF communication, and signals can be found all over the HF spectrum.

Stanag 4285 Decoding with RTL-SDR (RTL2832), Sorcerer and SDR Sharp

ISS Packet Repeater Received with RTL-SDR

YouTube user ronpaulatemybaby has posted a video showing his reception of the International Space Station (ISS) amateur packet repeater on 145.825 MHz, using the rtl-sdr. He used a R820T dongle, two meter dipole, SDRSharp and decoding software MixW.

RTL SDR International Space Station Packet Repeater 145.825 Mhz

Meteor Reflection Observations with RTL-SDR

YouTube user ek6rsc has posted a video showing one week of meteor scatter observation at 59.25MHz using the rtl-sdr and the HROFFT software. More information about meteor scatter observations can be found at the page of The International Project For Radio Meteor Observation. The rtl-sdr is handy as a cheap monitoring tool for purposes such as this. From Wikipedia meteor scatter is described as follows.

 Meteor burst communications (MBC), also referred to as meteor scatter communications, is a radio propagation mode that exploits the ionized trails of meteors during atmospheric entry to establish brief communications paths between radio stations up to 2,250 kilometres (1,400 mi) apart.

The results of observations 1 week Meteor reflection 59.25Mhz

RTL-SDR Direct Sampling Compared with WebSDR

YouTube user opilarczyk has posted a video comparing HF performance of the rtl-sdr with the direct sampling mod at 7MHz with WebSDR, an online SDR streaming site. The comparison shows how the direct sampling mod is extremely susceptible to broadcast FM interference.

RTL-SDR gqrx direct sampling vs WebSDR on rtl2832u