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If you have a Mac just run Windows in boot camp. Way easier than screwing with Linux in a vm
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Mar 24, 2020 16:53
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rdb posted:Thanks. I ordered one from nooelec directly. Amazon went from 1 week delivery to over a month overnight despite the item being in stock. No luck getting a raspberry pi anytime soon either. I am going to go ahead and just put linux on a spare external ssd for my mac. Lets just hope it gets here before whatever is about to happen does happen. FYI, I've used parallels USB passthrough extensively and it's always been flawless. While I haven't used it for an SDR stick I have no reason to believe it wouldn't work. So go with a VM if that's easier for you.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:54
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:If you have a Mac just run Windows in boot camp. Way easier than screwing with Linux in a vm Really depends. Running a docker instance with gnuradio is probably easier than getting the equivalent installed. However if you just want to decode p25 and don’t want to use the command line then yeah booting windows and using a GUI is easiest. But GQRX has a built .dmg that might still work fine and if not it’s an easy install on OS X with homebrew.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:08
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I don’t have a copy of windows and I don’t really want to obtain one. I put ubuntu on an external SSD for now. Do I need two SDRs or just one for this? Seeing some conflicting info, people are using two on windows, one for the trunk and one to listen to the conversations.
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Mar 24, 2020 17:55
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rdb posted:I don’t have a copy of windows and I don’t really want to obtain one. This works great under os x and linux: https://github.com/DSheirer/sdrtrunk You only *need* 1, but the more you get the more channels you can cover and thus the more traffic you can decode.
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Mar 24, 2020 20:12
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Trabisnikof posted:This works great under os x and linux: https://github.com/DSheirer/sdrtrunk Awesome. Thanks. I will be back in a couple days hopefully.
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Mar 24, 2020 21:16
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Trabisnikof posted:This works great under os x and linux: https://github.com/DSheirer/sdrtrunk
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Mar 24, 2020 22:58
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Bought a UV-5r off amazon before amazon quits delivering. Is FRS/GMRS/CB and MURS my best bet with this?
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Mar 24, 2020 23:40
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Bought a UV-5r off amazon before amazon quits delivering. Is FRS/GMRS/CB and MURS my best bet with this? It is not legal to use on FRS, you need a license for GMRS, it doesn't do CB and it's also not legal to use it on MURS.
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Mar 25, 2020 00:10
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It will receive all of them though is what I meant, right?
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Mar 25, 2020 00:15
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:It will receive all of them though is what I meant, right? No. CB is WAY out of what it can receive. The rest are fine, as well as (very lovely) FM broadcast reception.
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Mar 25, 2020 00:19
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Ok, that works, I have a set of CB radios anyway if I really want to be on that
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Mar 25, 2020 01:53
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c'mon Jim you post in the 'pos and didnt ask jonny290 or me before dropping for an HT? for shame baofeng sucks but it will RX at least. it's not ideal for transmitting on for a bunch of reasons, though, legally as noted above it's not type accepted by the FCC to transmit on those bands + its "sloppy" and sprays RF noise on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely do you think you are to ever do about 5-10 hours of question & answer pool studying and stopping by a church or fire station to take a multiple choice test that costs about $10?
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Mar 25, 2020 04:17
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rdb posted:Thanks. I ordered one from nooelec directly. Amazon went from 1 week delivery to over a month overnight despite the item being in stock. No luck getting a raspberry pi anytime soon either. I am going to go ahead and just put linux on a spare external ssd for my mac. Lets just hope it gets here before whatever is about to happen does happen.
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Mar 25, 2020 13:00
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CapnBry posted:If it doesn't look like Amazon can get it out to you, I have an old NooElec SDR that was my main SDR for years I can send you along with a Raspberry Pi 2B and a wifi adapter to borrow until the supply chain gets back to normal. It can't do direct sampling for doing <28MHz but it does have a temperature-compensated oscillator and a pretty blue aluminum case. All you gotta do is pay to ship it back when we're all healthy again. My city goes on lockdown tomorrow at midnight so PM me your address if you need any of this. You'll need a power supply (5V/2A micro USB or any 7-24VDC power supply with a 5.5x2.1mm barrel jack) and a microSD card. I appreciate the offer, I think I am ok for now. The SDR I ordered from nooelec has a tracking number via usps. It should arrive within a few days. I put a temporary install of ubuntu on an external drive on my iMac. Its a late 2017 model with the upgraded i7 cpu and a decent amount of RAM, so I think it will suffice until this blows over. I have been thinking a bit about antennas. I have an OTA television antenna mast with an amp and splitter in the basement. On that same mast I also have a cell signal booster yagi. If I wind up enjoying this I may want to add antennas for this. I realize antennas are frequency specific, is there a good set of them that would suffice for HAM and P25?
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Mar 25, 2020 14:48
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Sniep posted:c'mon Jim you post in the 'pos and didnt ask jonny290 or me before dropping for an HT? for shame Well my only real requirements were “handheld”, “cheap” and “will rx FRS, gmrs, murs, etc”
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Mar 25, 2020 17:07
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rdb posted:I have been thinking a bit about antennas. I have an OTA television antenna mast with an amp and splitter in the basement. On that same mast I also have a cell signal booster yagi. If I wind up enjoying this I may want to add antennas for this. I realize antennas are frequency specific, is there a good set of them that would suffice for HAM and P25? If you do find that you need an external antenna, or just want one to see what else you get, look to the scanner market for the best wide receive options. Obviously if you develop a strong interest in a specific band then you might want to consider something more specific but unless you're looking to do DX or satellite work you really might not need anything. Filtering is really the key with the RTL units at least, they're not great at it by default and can easily be overpowered by nearby transmitters, especially if hooked up to a large antenna. The more tightly you can filter the signal down to just the spectrum you care about the better your results will be. If you're anywhere near a radio or television broadcast tower you might need to look in to these. edit: Really depending on what frequencies you care about the TV antenna itself might not be bad, though I don't know how the amp might impact things.
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Mar 25, 2020 20:19
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wolrah posted:Radios aren't nearly as picky about antennas when you're only receiving. Wideband receive-only antennas are common and cheap as a result. Most of the RTL-SDRs actually sold as SDRs (as opposed to the earlier rebadged TV sticks) come with an antenna that is decent enough for most VHF/UHF uses as long as you don't need the extra elevation or have a very radio-unfriendly structure. Whats the next logical step up from an RTL? LimeSDR/mini, hackRF, bladeRF I have all looked at. Don’t really like the hackRF for the price.
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Mar 25, 2020 21:13
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rdb posted:Whats the next logical step up from an RTL? LimeSDR/mini, hackRF, bladeRF I have all looked at. Don’t really like the hackRF for the price. You can get a fake HackRF for under $70 on aliexpress and they work fine. You can get the whole hackrf/portapack/enclosure for like $150, but the Portapack is kind of disappointing, even with new firmware.
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Mar 26, 2020 02:19
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rdb posted:Whats the next logical step up from an RTL? LimeSDR/mini, hackRF, bladeRF I have all looked at. Don’t really like the hackRF for the price. What do you want to do with SDR beyond what you can do with a RTL? Are you more interested in transmitting or are you looking for better/wider receive? Do you have any specific bands and/or signal types in mind?
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Mar 26, 2020 20:22
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wolrah posted:There are enough options out there that unfortunately this question is sort of like someone who drives a generic old beater asking what their next car should be. Some devices have FPGAs that can help take load off the host system, some have faster or more accurate ADCs/DACs, some have a greater tuning range, some have multiple TX or RX channels, MIMO, etc. Which model makes the most sense depends on your wants, needs, and budget. Multiple channels, load off system and more accurate. I would like to put this on its own box and let it run in the background, listen to it when I feel like it or check recordings etc. Right now with one SDR its missing quite a bit with the message “tuner unavailable”. Also SDR trunk was a pain to get working. For anyone who tries don’t be on the latest version of java when you compile the jmbe codec. SDR trunk also seems really leaky, I let it run overnight and came out in the morning and it was using 650% (out of 800) cpu. Linux turned out to not be an option because there are no working alsa drivers for imac 27 18,3. And I hooked it up to the TV antenna. Works sooo much better than the desktop ones. Going to need some splitters.
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Mar 28, 2020 13:29
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rdb posted:And I hooked it up to the TV antenna. Works sooo much better than the desktop ones. Going to need some splitters. One of these?  I have one myself, I'd love to hook an SDR up to it and listen to local scanner stuff, like city services or air channels from the airport nearby. I see some posts around saying I need some kind of additional filter for that? I doubt I could get low enough to hear WWV, but I find that stupid thing soothing. 
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Mar 29, 2020 03:13
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Look at radio reference and get a feel for whats in your area. And yeah, thats the antenna I am using. Most of the $20 SDRs will need an adapter, SMA male to f-type coax in order to connect to it. And since my area uses P25 system, I got two SDRs. One to monitor control channels and the other picks up the voice calls. It sorta worked with just one but it missed 80% of the calls because the control channels have a lot going on. I don’t have much experience beyond that. Haven’t really figured out any of the local PD systems yet. I think I may add another SDR since they are mostly in the 150mhz range. rdb fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Mar 29, 2020 |
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Mar 29, 2020 03:19
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Can you guys recommend a good soldering iron setup for someone new to soldering? Right now I'm only worried about soldering connectors on co-ax, but I can see using it more as I go down the ham radio rabbit hole. My Yaesu FT-65 has to go back. It has a terrible high-pitched whine whenever it's on receive. It's not environmental, either. The noise is there in multiple locations and with multiple different antennas. Sadly, the little Baofeng I bought sounds better. 
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Mar 30, 2020 17:38
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The Hambulance posted:Can you guys recommend a good soldering iron setup for someone new to soldering? Right now I'm only worried about soldering connectors on co-ax, but I can see using it more as I go down the ham radio rabbit hole. I have a Hako FX-888 that I quite like, but I think the newer ones are digitally controlled and have a different model number.
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Mar 30, 2020 17:48
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Has anyone played around with ATSC television reception and decoding with an SDR? Do I need 6MHz of bandwidth or can I get by with less and only look at a single subchannel? I have an RTL-SDR that is pretty old, "RTL2832U R820T2", that I dug out of the closet the other day. FM radio works great but that's all I've tried so far this go round.
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Mar 30, 2020 20:21
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rdb posted:Multiple channels, load off system and more accurate. I would like to put this on its own box and let it run in the background, listen to it when I feel like it or check recordings etc. Where I'm at for example I could cover 26 of the 44 analog municipal/public safety frequencies in my county with a pair of RTLs each grabbing 1 MHz of spectrum around 453 and 460 MHz, respectively. Two more could cover 10 more channels in the 461 and 463 ranges, but those last eight would take six more without even considering the two P25 systems in the area that would need a total of four RTLs to cover their channels in the high 700 MHz range. If I were to instead use basically any other SDR marketed at the DIY/tinkerer market (HackRF, BladeRF, LimeSDR, etc. I could use a total of three radios to cover everything. That said, those three radios would still end up costing more than 10 RTLs would, and depending on the amount of filtering one wanted to do might make that a lot more expensive and complicated. Then again splitting a signal from an antenna that many ways isn't amazing either, but some channels may not need to use the big antenna so you have options to consider. tl;dr: It might be better to throw a shitload of cheap hardware at the problem rather than a small amount of more expensive hardware. Personally I've built Pi+RTL appliances for a few of my always on roles like ADS-B and such. Pi 3B+ and 4 are especially nice since they can be made to run off of PoE without requiring any janky adapters so it's really easy to toss a few up in your attic. The Java-ness of sdrtrunk might prove advantageous in that it may be possible to throw it on a Pi and do something like that. taqueso posted:Has anyone played around with ATSC television reception and decoding with an SDR? Do I need 6MHz of bandwidth or can I get by with less and only look at a single subchannel? That said if you get a SDR with the appropriate bandwidth GNU Radio has some fairly solid ATSC components that'll let you get from a raw signal to MPEG transport streams that VLC will decode. IIRC that was actually the first way anyone actually decoded ATSC on a Linux box, before any tuners designed for the purpose were officially supported. Here's some relevant info https://medium.com/@rxseger/receiving-atsc-digital-television-with-an-sdr-76b03a863fea
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Mar 30, 2020 22:57
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Anybody have any experience with the Yaesu FT-891? HF is crappy at my home due to nearby power lines making a lot of noise, so I have to go portable. Since FT-857s are pretty hard to come by these days, it seems like the next logical choice. The reviews I’ve read seem positive overall, but I don’t want to blow $600 on something that sucks. I’m also looking at the Outreach antenna from Outback. If any of you have any experience with one, I’d love to hear it.
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Apr 6, 2020 01:30
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Honestly I poo poo on the 891 at release because I thought it was dumb to make an '857 replacement' that didn't have 2m or 70cm, but after a couple years, it has a reputation for being a good and solid radio. Reportedly the DSP noise reduction is really good on it, which will help in a compromise/urban setup. As far as the Outbacker antennas...they're not _bad_ but they aren't particularly efficient and you're going to pay a few bucks for them. My two suggestions are to get a hamstick setup (they're 20 bucks each, pick 2-3 bands and get a mount and you're set up for under $100) or to look at the MFJ "big stick" vertical setup. https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-2286?_pos=1&_sid=305adf83b&_ss=r For just over $100 you get a 17 foot telescoping whip, a tapped coil to put at the base that will tune it between 40 and 10 meters, and a mount. I use this as one of my portable/camping antennas and have the mount bolted to a big rear end telescope tripod that I found at the thrift. I cut some ground radials to lay out and feed it against, and it is 100% as good as my full sized antennas on 20 through 10 meters, and not far behind my full sized (30 foot) 40 meter vertical. Everything fits in the bag that came with the tripod mount.
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Apr 6, 2020 02:01
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Finally hopped on the local repeater with my UV-5r last night and listened to the local greybeards talk about how bored they are in quarantine Surprising lack of old man yelling at a cloud. From what I can tell from the part of the conversation I caught, they have a nightly check-in, so I'll come silently hang out tonight and see whats up. They seem to do a check-in to see whos on, an update (basically whats new with you), news (I dont know if this is HAM news, local news or what yet), a buy/sell session (someone popped on looking for some manner of equipment I've never heard of) and then a general chat session. It seems remarkably well organized.
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Apr 6, 2020 14:21
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:It seems remarkably well organized. You stumbled on a "net". That's the standard format.
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Apr 6, 2020 16:42
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Jonny 290 posted:Honestly I poo poo on the 891 at release because I thought it was dumb to make an '857 replacement' that didn't have 2m or 70cm, but after a couple years, it has a reputation for being a good and solid radio. Reportedly the DSP noise reduction is really good on it, which will help in a compromise/urban setup. Sweet. I'll buy that next month, or as my budget permits. Still have to get my general so I can talk on the drat thing. THANKS CORONAVIRUS!  Jonny 290 posted:As far as the Outbacker antennas...they're not _bad_ but they aren't particularly efficient and you're going to pay a few bucks for them. My two suggestions are to get a hamstick setup (they're 20 bucks each, pick 2-3 bands and get a mount and you're set up for under $100) or to look at the MFJ "big stick" vertical setup. https://mfjenterprises.com/products/mfj-2286?_pos=1&_sid=305adf83b&_ss=r I ended up ordering the Outbacker Outreach. The two guys that are mentoring me swear by them, so we'll see. If it sucks, I know who to beat with it.  I also ordered the MFJ Big Stick as a backup if it turns out the Outbacker doesn't work well enough. Also, where did you find HamSticks for $20? They are $35~ish everywhere I've looked. I did find MFJ HamTenna mono-band antennas for $20, but no hamsticks.On the subject of radials, I know how I'd deal with them if I was able to put an antenna up on my property. But for portable use (and I'm thinking in local parks), I'd worry about little kids or shithead adults tripping over the 35' long wires I'll have laying around. Can I get away with a copper grounding rod under the tripod or something? There's really no place in any of the parks around me that some goober won't walk over to make sure I'm not talking to nazis on the moon or something.
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Apr 6, 2020 17:27
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the MFJ mono band whips are the ones i'm talking about. Lakeview pioneered the actual "hamstick" name, but now everybody uses to describe those antennas of any brand. Sorta like Kleenex. Anyways the MFJ ones are actually a bit better - the ferrule that the whip connects to is threaded, so intead of the old method, where you had to mark the whip position and then undo the set screws to tear the hamstick down to a convenient size, you just unscrew the top bit and keep everything together. Plus, the MFJ ones are hollow core on the fiberglass part, so you just turn the whip + ferrule part upside down and stash it inside the fiberglass bit.
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Apr 6, 2020 19:51
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The Hambulance posted:Sweet. I'll buy that next month, or as my budget permits. Still have to get my general so I can talk on the drat thing. THANKS CORONAVIRUS! If you go with two hamtennas plus the MFJ dipole adapter, you don't really need a big radial system like that. I've got a hamtenna dipole attached to a piece of metal electrical conduit, which I slip over the top of an old photo tripod I had lying around (unscrewing the tripod head lets the conduit slip right on)
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Apr 6, 2020 20:00
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Pham Nuwen posted:If you go with two hamtennas plus the MFJ dipole adapter, you don't really need a big radial system like that. I've got a hamtenna dipole attached to a piece of metal electrical conduit, which I slip over the top of an old photo tripod I had lying around (unscrewing the tripod head lets the conduit slip right on) That's a great idea, actually. I will give that a try. I was worried about spending $$$ on too many radios, I'm starting to think antennas are a bigger problem
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Apr 7, 2020 12:07
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The Hambulance posted:That's a great idea, actually. I will give that a try. ham radio: $100 for a radio, three $57 trips to home depot in one day for antenna parts. Learn the ways.
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Apr 11, 2020 23:27
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Haha that's too relatable. "Oh cool I can make a 2m antenna for only like $10 in wire" -$105 in materials later- It was only $10 in wire!
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Apr 11, 2020 23:42
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Home Depot machine learning algorithm: "We're not sure if this guy is a chain link fence installer, a plumber, or an electrician"
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Apr 12, 2020 00:11
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Looks like at least one of the VEs on Hamstudy.org is offering license exams online. You have to have webcams for them to observe the test and theres a bunch of other rules, but someone is at least making an effort to continue testing.
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Apr 12, 2020 12:05
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I'll be taking my Technician test online this Wednesday through a Massachusetts VE group as part of the "beta". It's being conducted over Zoom and will require connecting both the testing computer and a cellphone to the session so I can pan around the room. Currently it's one test-taker at a time so they're only offering 3 time slots per day and only a single level so I can't shoot for General until a later date. Hopefully once this first round is done they'll be opening it up to the general masses.
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Apr 12, 2020 16:47
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