Dongle or uv5r or clone - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / rf-microwave

author: AardvarkM31
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2021, 04:50:27 pm
content: Hello,Have been interested in ham since forever. Recently decided I would like to monitor it some as inexpensively as possible, maybe get a Tech license or GMRS. Consideered the UV5r type transceiver, or maybe an inexpensive sdr dongle. Won't be getting either licenses any time in the near future.Which would have the most bang for the buck, or any other suggestions?

author: HB9EVI
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2021, 06:30:10 pm
content: if you mean a RTL-SDR dongle you're certainly able to do much more with it than with a Baofeng; aside from the fact that after years of critics about the lacking harmonic suppression in all those Baofengs, Pufongs a.s.o. they are till this day not running within specs and they remain simple FM devices for 2 bands, where not much activity is found anymore these days, so the probability that you'll get bored from it very fast is rather high.get a RTL-SDR v3 in the silver case and you'll have plenty of things to discover with it

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 02:50:38 am
content: Baofeng is a nice cheap radio, but it has a low dynamic range. It can be a little improved with using full size external VHF antenna through bandpass filter. But if you're planning to use it in the city where too many noise from mobile cell stations and other equipment, it's better to buy something more professional with superhet receiver. But if you use baofeng in the forest far away from city and powerful VHF/UHF transmitters, it can work nice.RTLSDR is a good as a monitor radio. It allows to see wide bandwidth and quickly tune on the frequency which is active at the moment. It has a little worse sensitivity than baofeng on VHF, but still allows to listen almost all VHF communications. In addition if you use original RTLSDRv3 it allows to listen also all shortwave bands.

author: AardvarkM31
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 05:33:26 am
content: Quote from: HB9EVI on December 11, 2021, 06:30:10 pmHello HB9EVI,Thanks for the experienced evaluation and the directed advice. I will take your advice and look at the RTL-SDR device.

author: AardvarkM31
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 05:35:46 am
content: Quote from: radiolistener on December 12, 2021, 02:50:38 amAppreciate the advice and direction. Sounds like a plan, v3!!Thanx

author: HB9EVI
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2021, 10:44:14 am
content: it's true what Radiolistener says - the dynamic range due to 8bit-only sampling is rather low; on the other side, if you want to listen into shortwave, you normally don't have an extremely high dynamic range available on those band due to the considerably high noise level. Certainly it's a different situation on VHF and UHF - but like often in life it's a tradeoff.Imo you get quite a powerful device for the buck with the modern RTL-SDR sticks

author: AardvarkM31
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2021, 10:31:14 pm
content: Quote from: HB9EVI on December 12, 2021, 10:44:14 amThanks for the additional opinion and explanation. Looks like I am definitaly leaning that way. I have seen some devices that are"Made in Canada", elenco are they any good?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 25, 2021, 09:46:05 pm
content: RTLSDR dongles are what they are, I have lost count of how many I bought back in the day. I still have them but find that I get much better performance when Iuse an appropriately , tuned antenna for the frequency band in use, or a balun. Just a monopole antenna brings in so much noise where I live the interesting signals are not audible. Some time back I bought a bunch of 50 to 300 ohm 4:1 TV baluns. I also get a lot of use out of them. I have a rabbit ears 300 ohm antenna hooked up to one of these baluns that fits perfectly into my camera tripod and that makes a perfect adjustable VHF-UHF antenna. Another good buy I found was the 400 -1000 MHz capable PCB log periodic from WB5Vjb. The RTLSDRS are not very sensituve above 1000 MHz, especially in the hills around me. I ulso have his higher frequency LP. Its a very good antenna for VHF, I can tell by its directionality which is sharp, unfortunately, it seems there is very little (if any) ham activity around me above 1000 MHz. I wish I lived a bit higher up. But I do hear a lot of repeater activity around 440 MHz. The entire tristate area, NJ, NY and CONN. The WB5VJB antenna which was cheap, pulls in a lot of signals and it can be used to transmit too, so it could be a good station antenna especially for the space constrained. It also can be used quite effectively for HDTV. With it I can pull in most of the NYC free TV channels. Very well. For an omni antenna, if you have access to a VNA and even if you don't simply measure it carefully, I highly recommend making the dual band easy to make j-pole antenna designed and sold by by Ed Fong, I made the version you attach to a hook attached to your celing. This took me a while to get right because I made a really stupid mistake while building it. I live in a tiny home and I dont have a good work space, In my kitchen I have a hanging light/ceilingfan which makes it not such a good place to build antennas.So I thought I would use my fishing pole to make it easy to hold the antenna in "free space" so I could measure the SWR accurately, Everything went okay but getting it "just right" seemed abnormally difficult. I finally had a eureka moment when I realized that the glossy red fishing pole I was using to hold its end away frommy kitchen stuff was made of carbon fiber and conductive. Only when I switched to using nylon string to support it in free(er) space did I finally get it tuned. As an omni dual band receiving antenna the "DBJ-2" variation, when hooked to my ceiling hook works quite well and must have good gain at the horizon. (If and only if I just keep it away frommeand the wall and everything else, its quite sensitive to detuning when anything is close to it, and the gain then becomes so-so. I already had everything I needed to make it. The hardest thing to source was the 300 ohm twin lead. It costs almost nothing to make. Lots of hams I hear seem to be using them with baofeng radios. Thats a popular combination. They get out okay, too considering those radios only possess a couple of watts. Maybe its just because they are so numerous, I guess. I hear them here even in the valley I live in, the valley of the former (Ice Age era) Lake Passaic, and the historic birthplace of modern industry and the machine age in the then-young United States.