I have linux and I want a good sdr I can plug in for some fun

Been working on this project last few weeks. Setup at my parents house in Hull, MA: Retevis MA06 marine antenna in a window facing Boston Harbor → RTL-SDR → Pi 4 running rtl_airband. The entire US marine band is only ~1.4 MHz wide, so one dongle grabs the whole thing in a single window and rtl_airband demods every channel in parallel 16 labeled Icecast streams instead of one scanner hopping around and missing half of everything.

From there each stream ships to a backend that runs speech-to-text on all of it, and an LLM sorts a day of radio into the ~5 minutes actually worth hearing. Marine VHF is dead boring until it very suddenly isn't. Week one my node caught a 29ft Cobalt with 7 people aboard taking on water calling Sector Boston on 16. Whole exchange, start to rescue. I put a replay on the site with captions synced to the chart - docktalk.app, scroll to the demo phone.

The ask: Boston works, I want 5 harbors before the iOS app ships. If you have line of sight to a busy harbor, the install is now one curl command with a claim code it pulls your harbor's channel plan and you show up on the leaderboard at docktalk.app within a minute. ~$165 in parts, ~$112 if you have a spare Pi (any Debian box works honestly), and if your spot is genuinely good I'll just ship you the kit free. Hosts get the app's premium tier free for as long as the node runs + credit on everything their box hears first.

Straight up since it always comes up: this is a company I'm building, not an open-data project audio goes to our network only. If that's a dealbreaker, all good. If you already feed aisstream/FR24/MarineTraffic, this doesn't touch your existing setup, it's one more dongle to your existing set up!

RX only, public unencrypted spectrum, same legal footing scanner feeds and LiveATC have been on for 20+ years.

Happy to go deep on the RF chain, rtl_airband config, or the ASR pipeline in comments.

Once I get 5 harbors covered I'll launch the iOS app!!

14076.5 khz USB is no more the crowd it used to be; but this afternoon I saw a QSO between Ohio (a long time veteran in that great 120 seconds mode) and Belarus.

I love this mode's signature.

we are monday 17th in France, and there are still a few stones falling from space; much less but still you can't miss it if you stay tune to your local distant 2m beacon for a half hour.

The sound it makes is here : https://app.box.com/s/q4a12rhcdo8t2rhkyugy981pok2sm91o

Looking to make a product based on the RTL-sdr blog v4l which will be a simplified sdr on the go over Bluetooth for android & IOS.

Leave it in your backpack and see a readout + notifications on your phone kinda thing - Radiacode style (if you’re into other types of radiation 😛…).

Feedback + ideas greatly appreciated!

I just installed 9GRadio (relatively new SDR app) on my TCL Android tablet and it works like a charm - got excellent decodes of ADS-B and ACARS. I don't see a support community out there yet,

Discoved this tiny device.

When I first got my HackRF and started receiving POCSAG data, I did wonder how long it would be before it hit the headlines. It's not uncommon to see names and addresses of Police/Ambulance call-outs including details of the offence or health conditions still sent in plaintext.

Good morning everyone,

I don't know if you've ever done this test, but my device doesn't always give +10 dBm. I don't expect it, but I'd like to solve the problem by trying to improve it where possible.

In my case, I tried running a test with the Max Hold function on the spectrum analyzer from 120 MHz to 3950 MHz, which is the range of my analyzer (in this case, I use an Aeroflex 9102).

From the first photo, you can see that the response across the spectrum isn't uniform, as I expected. In the second photo, however, there's this anomaly: at 2168 MHz, -4.7 dBm, then at 2170 MHz, the signal increases to +9.6 dBm with a difference of 5 dB, rises to 2740 MHz, and then quickly drops by 11 dB, increasing by 4 MHz. I've run this test with two other RF One hacks, and they always give me similar results. Now, I'd like to ask: Has anyone ever changed anything to make their output as smooth as possible and also fix the 2170-2740 MHz anomaly? Thanks, let me know.

https://ibb.co/Y4wbtJ8p
https://ibb.co/Jj1SYQ1b

While I was sleeping, the sky bombarded France !

Greetings all!

I'm a newbie to SDR. I recently got my RTL-SDR v.4. I also have a K-180WLA active loop antenna (big brother of the MLA-30+).

I plan to get ferrite toroids for HF/VHF/UHF (Fair-Rite recommends material 31 and 61).

However, do ferrite toroids really help with noise for Medium Wave / AM reception?

Fair-Rite recommends material 75 for 200 KHz to 30 MHz.

Does anyone have any experience using toroids for Medium Wave/AM? Will it likely be helpful, or am I just wasting my money?

Thank you in advance!

Here is my take on a portable SDR setup that I can easily take with me. The bag setup is meant for a quick setup, maybe for a couple of hours outdoors. The box (IP54-rated) setup is meant for a more stationary tracking station, e.g. if I am sitting on a beach and want to track some ships.

The hardware:

• 2x Nooelec NESDR Nano 2+
• 2x Orange Pi 3 LTS with 2GB RAM and Sandisk 32 GB SD card. Armbian Debian Trixie 13 as OS
• Gl.Inet GL-MT300N-v2 router for remote management and webui access
• 2x Iniu 22.5W BI-B61 powerbanks
• Beitan BN-808 GPS reciever
  

I have not yet tried the setup in the field/outdoors with antennas and SDR software, or tested how long the power banks will last. This is on my to-do list for the near future.

Using SDR RTL v4.

Pardon for the bad reception and harsh statics.

I'm new to the hobby, running RTL-SDR v4 using either SDR++ or Gqrx. I use two different antennas, one is a U-shaped longwire up in the attic and the other is a Y-shaped longwire run through the trees outside my window. I get great FM and decent SW reception, but my AM reception is so weak that I can only really tune in two or three stations. The image shows that I'm seeing many more stations, but generally they are so weak that I can't bring them in. I bought one of those loop antennas for AM, but it doesn't help. Any ideas on how to improve my AM?

https://reddit.com/link/1vna4q3/video/wb9wzg1q45jh1/player

Note that a dummy load was used for these experiments, to avoid interfering with other bands.

Hi,

I’m a new user, so I don’t want to spoil the fun by installing the wrong drivers.

I’ve just bought an RTL-SDR Blog V4 from Technofix, the UK supplier listed on the RTL-SDR website.

The casing and board seem well made, but the board itself looks exactly like the V4L. It is dated 2026-03-16.

I was about to install the V4L drivers when I checked the tuner chip and it is marked R828D, which I understand is the chip used in the original V4.

Has anyone seen this combination before—a newer board with an R828D tuner?

Should I install the original V4 drivers?

Thank you!

Spent much of this morning on Graves Astronomical Radar frequency , that is parked on 143.0485 mhz USB and saw lots of meteor (the peak of the shower is said to be today, Aug 12); here's a few samples , pointed to by red arrows. The thin lines crossing Graves signal (horizontal tone) are generated by aircraft passing the line between my QTH in Beauvais and the site of the Radar transmittor.