Over at KF7LZE’s Blog a post about an upcoming integrated HF upconverter using tiny surface mount components has been posted. It is made by Marty KN0CK and will be for sale on KF7LZE’s site soon.
Marty KN0CK developed a very interesting v1.0 HF converter based on surface mount technology that fits inside the casing of an RTLSDR tuner dongle. He’s recently sent me schematics for the revision, which should offer even better performance.
YouTube user 907h9879070g9790 has posted a video showing Virtual Radar Server running on a Raspberry Pi with the Raspian hardfloat image OS installed. He used Mono to allow the .NET based Virtual Radar Server to run on the Raspberry Pi. Instructions for using Virtual Radar Server with Mono can be found here.
Combined with an rtl-sdr and dump1090, ADS-B packets can be sent to Virtual Radar Server, and then the aircraft radar map can be viewed on a PC or internet enabled device via a network connection. This can allow a small self contained remote ADS-B monitoring system to be set up.
EDIT: Unfortunately the video owner has taken down the video.
Reddit user BigReid has posted an update on his PCB based hairpin ADS-B filter. He has now added a low noise amplifier (LNA) circuit onto the same PCB board. BigReid used the LNA design written about on this page. The PCB files are here and the Reddit thread can be found here.
YouTube user nerdsville shows a signal reception comparison of his discone antenna and his home made 1090 MHz tuned ADS-B collinear antenna in this video. The collinear antenna shows a dramatic improvement over the discone.
ADS-B is a broadcast system which can be used to track aircraft like a radar. More information about rtl-sdr and ADS-B here.
A new digital noise reduction plugin for SDRSharp has been released. It is packaged as part of the SDRSharp binaries. Head to the SDRSharp downloads page, and download and use the automated installer for rtl-sdr under the heading “Important note for RTL-SDR users”.
Then in SDRSharp, simply click “Enabled” in the Digital Noise Reduction plugin window and adjust the slider until you get good results. In testing I found significant improvements in noise reduction.
Blogger and Amateur Radio enthusiast N4JTC has posted a guide on setting up a satellite receiving station with the rtl-sdr. Originally the guide was intended for receiving the PhoneSat test satellites, but they have now gone offline after a week as planned. But, the guide is still useful for any current and future satellites.
The recent launch of the PhoneSats got my SDR and satellite juices flowing again. This time I decided to automate things because work seems to get in the way of my satellite listening fun. I found a combination that works great and incorporates FREE software and inexpensive hardware.
Reddit user soooooil has posted a series of images showing his home made Discone antenna made out of wire coat hangers and designed for a minimum frequency of 130MHz. His thread discussing the Discone is here.
A Discone is a good general antenna for the rtl-sdr as they are extremely wideband, and can be expected to be useful over almost the entire frequency range that is tuneable by the the rtl-sdr.
Another page on a home made Discone also designed for a minimum of 130MHz is here with some brief instructions links to design calculators.
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.
