Receiving CB Radio with an RTL-SDR Dongle

Back in July we posted a story by Mario Fillipi (N2HUN) who wrote an article about using the RTL-SDR to receive CB radio, and how while the CB radio heyday is over, there are still opportunities for good listening available today.

Recently Mario has posted a new article on swling.com where he discusses his CB radio listening hobby further. To listen to the CB band at 26.965 – 27.405 MHz he uses an RTL-SDR dongle together with a ham-it-up upconverter. While an upconverter is not required since most RTL-SDR dongles typically tune down to 24-25 MHz, he finds that using one helps because it can help block out interference from the strong broadcast FM band.  We note that you could also use one of our BCFM Block filters for the same purpose.

Mario notes that recently he noticed the CB band was open during the night. Usually the frequencies that CB radio uses propagate best during the daytime, and poorly at night. But on some occasions it can open up at night as well. He writes that on some occasions during a winters night during a snowstorm he has been able to receive the world on CB, from Europe, the Caribbean and Australia.