A new way to listen to ham radio - and other frequencies

I have heard a lot about SDR dongles in recent years, so when an RTL-SDR V4 genuine (not a clone) dongle came up for sale here in Ireland, I snapped at the chance to get one relatively cheaply to see what all the fuss is about.

My RTL-SDR V4 dongle is the latest addition to the EI2KC ham shack.

Now I'll be honest in telling you that I (a) didn't know what to expect and (b) didn't have a clue how to use it, since I've never owned one. It has taken me about a week to get it working properly, and receiving clear signals on the amateur bands and on other frequencies.

Some of my ham friends say that to RTFM (Read The F*ckin Manual) is cheating! They say you're supposed to get some radio equipment working properly without consulting the manual. It's a joke, of course, but it probably refers to the fact that many radio amateurs and shortwave listeners do not, in fact, read the manual when installing a new piece of radio equipment.

The dongle came with an SO239 to SMA adapter, which was convenient, since all my antennas have PL259s on the end of their feeders. I was able to get the SDRPP (SDR Plus Plus or SDR++) software working, but initially it did not seem to be receiving anything from the dongle.

Some Googling and watching YouTube videos soon educated me about certain settings. I had it running, receiving some lower side band signals on the 40 metre (7Mhz) band, but those signals sounded distorted and I was not exactly thrilled.

A screenshot of the RTL-SDR V4 decoding FT8 and FT4 signals on 20 metres.

However, after a little bit of experimenting with some settings, I was eventually able to receive some quite clear signals on various amateur bands, mainly 80 metres, 40 metres and 20 metres. The SDR++ software has an excellent FT8 and FT4 decoding feature, and because the dongle can receive 2.4Mhz of bandwidth, the FT8 decoder works even when you are tuned away from the FT8 portion of the band.

I was able to receive some very nice, clear and clean signals on 40 metres in particular yesterday, and sat for a while listening to Denis EI6IF during a POTA activation. I could also hear most of his callers. I am able to use the Butternut HF6V as the receive antenna, alternating that with my random wire.

So far, so good. Tonight, I spent a short time listening to some lovely Chinese music on the AM broadcast band on 7.265Mhz. 

This dongle will allow me to keep an eye/ear on one band while the Yaesu FTdx10 is tuned to another. It's basically a cheap way to listen to two bands simultaneously, and saves on the space required to put another HF transceiver/receiver on the desk.

I will keep you posted about further SWL activities using this little piece of kit. By the way, it cost me €45. Not bad considering all that it offers.