Personal Blog

I recently bought a new RTL dongle that supports Direct Sampling that allows frequencies less than 40Mhz. In particular, the model I ordered was the RTL-SDR BLOG V.3. DONGLE that was really cheap compared with other solution. It still can't reach the quality of the other more expensive receivers, but it still a step up. The Dongle comes with a long external antenna. The RTL dongle. So, the question now is how better is from my old SDR. I did a check with the RTL power tool to see what is the difference. My old SDR Dongle (Fitipower FC0013) has coverage from 22 to 1100 MHz. The new Dongle RTL Blog V3 a has Rafael Micro R820T has coverage from 24 - 1766 MHz, but it also contains Direct Sampling that allows for High Frequencies. A word of warning here, the reception using Direct Sampling is very bad, especially if you connect the antenna without a filter band or/and preamplifier. I did experiments using the rtl_power, and the results showed much more gain for the ne...

A couple of years ago I tried to receive the NOAA 18 using a small in-door antenna and an RTL DVB-T USB receiver. The results were disappointing. However, I always had in the back of my mind that I will try again in the future with an external antenna. The era of cheap RTL-SDR hardware has come, so many people have started looking for receiving images from the weather satellites. Easy targets are the NOAA satellites that transmit weather images using Automatic Picture Transmission method ( APT ). These satellites provide images in different wavelengths of light. So after following instructions from a site dedicated to the RTL-SDR receivers , I tried to receive some pictures using the simple TV antenna. However, this decision had many disadvantages, as the TV antennas are designed to receive signal on higher frequencies from NOAA satellites. Despite the poor reception and low cost (e.g.,. none, I had an old tv antenna installed, but not used) I was able to receive some pictures. I ...