Thank you to Mitsunobu for writing in and sharing news about the release of his new product which is a Hi-Z (high impedance) to 50 Ohm matching transformer. This transformer allows you to use small antennas such as short telescopic whips for HF/SW reception on software defined radios.
Generally for HF reception you would want to use a full sized antenna, which can be many meters long and certainly not portable. However, by using an high impedance transformer it becomes possible to use smaller portable antennas. Reception with a small antenna and transformer will still be suboptimal compared to a full sized HF antenna, however, if the signals are strong enough the transformer will allow you to receive them decently.
In the tests shown on his blog (in Japanese, use Google Translate) he shows how the transformer adapter can be connected to a small telescopic whip and Malachite DSP SDR for portable use. Later he also shows how the adapter can make our Dipole Kit antenna work well for HF on a RTL-SDR Blog V3 with direct sampling.
Rob from Frugal Radio has recently uploaded the next episode in his excellent YouTube series on Aviation monitoring. In this episode Rob covers HF aviation communications. Rob writes:
Whether you are using a Software Defined Radio (SDR), an old school HF receiver, or utilizing a WebSDR, there is plenty to monitor when you know where to look.
This video will give you the basics of where to find the Aviation Communications that take place from 3-30 MHz (HF / Shortwave).
This episode covers VOLMET broadcasts, the Major World Air Route Areas (MWARA), and Military Nets like the US Global Communications System (HFGCS).
Remember, these signals travel thousands of miles. It can be quite exciting to receive them over such great distances. When editing this video I was listening to a VOLMET station in Auckland, New Zealand - a distance of over 7500 miles (12,200km) away!
Monitoring HF Aviation Voice Communications with your SDR Radio or a WebSDR
As a follow on to the previous post on fake SDRplay units, we also wanted to provide some guidance on fake RTL-SDR Blog V3 clones which are on the market. We are starting to receive an increase in support requests for fake RTL-SDR Blog V3 units. Please be aware that we cannot support these devices, and most of them are missing key features like the bias tee and the TCXO despite advertising these features on the listing and writing on the dongle body. Also as mentioned below a good majority of them appear to have a defect and poor performance.
Please check our store at www.rtl-sdr.com/store for our official stores on Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress and this site. We also have links on our store to our official local resellers.
We note that we tested a few of the "RTL.SDR" clones, and all had a defect causing very strange distorted spectrums where the signals where wider than they should be, and some units introduced a mysterious high pitched whine into every signal.
Spectrum from cloneSpectrum of an original RTL-SDR Blog V3
To be clear, different brands of RTL-SDR are perfectly fine - no one owns the RTL-SDR hardware concept and we are not any more "official" than any other brand (although we believe we were the first to start designing and producing significantly improved units and the first to design in a factory fitted TCXO, SMA connector, bias tee, thermal pad, and a redesigned PCB for lower noise and less spurs).
However, these clones shown in the image above can be considered a sort of scam as they attempt to trick buyers into believing that they are purchasing our RTL-SDR Blog V3 units with false advertising and by copying the enclosure design, when in fact the PCB inside is something inferior.
2021 Supply Chain Updates
As many of you may know the world is currently dealing with a major shortage of many electronics parts so we wanted to provide an update on the supply chain for the RTL-SDR Blog V3.
In particular, the world is very short on temperature compensated oscillators (TCXO's), a critical component used in our units to ensure frequency stability. The TCXO shortage is actually much worse than other components as AKM, the Japanese semiconductor factory that produces a critical component for making TCXOs burned down late last year. There are alternative suppliers, however their pricing is many multiples higher, and they are also inundated with orders increasing lead times.
We believe that we have enough TCXO stock in storage to last us several more months, however we may run into a shortage in the later months of this year. After we expend our current TCXO stock, we expect to have TCXO again around December, with more RTL-SDRs being ready by January 2022. We want people to be aware, as during these months of no stock more clones may appear on the market. Most clones do not use TCXOs, and hence have poor frequency stability.
Also on a related note our Amazon stock levels may be a little spotty throughout this year as there are currently often delays with shipping and the ports.
We also note that other products that we resell on our store such as the FlightAware Prostick Plus and NanoVNA V2+ are also experiencing supply issues, and may not have stock for a while. Production of some of our other products like the L-band Patch are also delayed due to shortages.
Due to the shortages component prices are also significantly increasing, and you may notice an increase in RTL-SDR pricing from us and competitors too. We hope that we will be able to reduce our pricing again once the global shortage is over, most likely around early next year.
The ##rtlsdr IRC Freenode chat channel will be moving to irc.libera.chat. However ##rtlsdr admins note that the Freenode channel will remain open for now. This move is in wake of the recent takeover drama surrounding Freenode, and the resignation of the majority of Freenode staff.
The ##rtlsdr IRC channel is where many RTL-SDR, software defined radio and RF enthusiasts hang out. You can join and idle with any IRC client, or a web client is available at https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/irc.libera.chat/##rtlsdr.
A discussion about the move has also been opened on Reddit /r/rtlsdr.
Many other related project channels such as #gnuradio are also moving over to Libera.
Over on his YouTube channel saveitforparts has uploaded a video showing how he has built an automated weather satellite image collector for the NOAA APT and Meteor M2 LRPT satellites. The video shows a time lapse of him building a QFH antenna, and how he's mounted a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR inside a waterproof enclosure attached to the antenna mast. He goes on to show how he's automating the system with the Raspberry-NOAA V2 software.
Automated Home Weather Station (Satellite Image Collector)
A few weeks ago we posted about "LikWidChz"'s work on using GNU Radio to channelize multiple NRSC-5 HD-Radio transmissions for simultaneous decoding with GNU Radio and an RTL-SDR. He has now also submitted a way to channelize pager traffic. He writes:
Quite a while ago I wanted to decode pager traffic, specifically Flex. When I started doing some basic poking around I figured out that there were multiple pager transmissions going on at once. Thinking about GnuRadio and its ability to chop up signal.. I was curious if anyone tried to decode them all at once.. I didn't get a whole lot of answers on the subject and It didn't seem like people used GnuRadio to pass MultiMonNG data.. I had my work cut out for me.
In my area all of the flex transmissions were between 928Mhz and 932Mhz and quite strong... You don't need much of an antenna to RX these transmissions. A simple wire of appropriate length will do nicely.
My plan was to design a graph and tune into the center of the range I was interested in and somehow channelize it. The remaining steps are required to format the data to allow MultiMonNG to process that audio stream. This is done a couple times depending on how many you want to decode in parallel. Have fun!
This this zip file we have uploaded his GRC file, and his full PDF description of the flowgraph. Again we note that to get in touch with the author you can log on #gnuradio and ##rtlsdr on freenode IRC and fine him under the nickname "LikWidChz".
Over on his YouTube channel CWNE88 has posted how he has been using and RTL-SDR with the rtl_433 software to explore the data coming in from various 433 MHz ISM band devices in his neighborhood. In the video he explains how he has set up rtl_433 on his Raspberry Pi, and what sort of data he is receiving. Some examples of devices he's received include various weather stations, doorbells, remotes and car tyre pressure monitors.
He also mentions how these signals are unencrypted, noting that in a future video he will show on GNU Radio how a false signal could be synthesized.
Thank you to Evuraan for writing in and sharing his new browser based HD Radio / NRSC-5 interface for the nrsc5 decoder which he has called yellowShoes.
NOTE: We have been informed by some users that yellowShoes may contain a Trojan virus. This is likely to be a false positive which is a very common problem with antivirus software falsely detecting viruses on newly released niche software via heuristics. We have removed the above link out of an abundance of caution, however if you wish to continue the yellowShoes Github is here. If you want the software, but are concerned you can check the code compile it yourself.
NOTE UPDATE: The author of the software has contacted us regarding the virus concerns and written "I wanted to write in clarify that it is indeed a false positive, please see https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/Au1FbtTZzbk and also https://golang.org/doc/faq#virus - this false positive occurs when you cross compile go binaries - This is a common occurrence, especially on Windows machines. Commercial virus scanning programs are often confused by the structure of Go binaries, which they don't see as often as those compiled from other languages."
HD Radio is a digital broadcast protocol replacement for analogue broadcast FM. It is only used in North America and is easily recognized as the two rectangular blocks on either side of a broadcast FM station signal on a spectrum analyzer/waterfall display. Together with an RTL-SDR and theori's command line nrsc5 decoder, the HD Radio signal can be decoded and listened to. Evuraan writes:
I wrote yellowShoes - an nrsc5 player which you can control from your browser. (Should work on Windows, Linux etc. Player F/E also works on Android Phones.)
Its sole dependency is that the nrsc5 binary must be available in the path.
