Got my SDR Play signing now

[Comptech]

Played with what I had and it worked fine. But now the HF is alive. Made a 400 foot dipole [200 feet each leg] mounted to trees with just a slight upslope and grounded the shield side of the coax to my house ground. HF and SW are alive! 11.175 usb load and clear, gander crystal clear. I think I like the SDR play better than my old R75. I can see what is going on.

 

[spongella]

That is one heck of a long antenna Comptech, wow. Gander Radio is one of the stalwarts of HF, always good to hear them. You can catch it also on 3.485 MHz after dark. The SDR Play has lots of great feedback from owners. Have fun.

Sponge

 

[Comptech]

Bad news, I think my play went deaf under 30 megs. I cannot pick up local am stations anymore and have swapped antennas. To even begin to get a shortwave station I have to turn the gain to the fullest and even the it is hard to hear. My waterfall in #SDR stays light blue with the gain all the way up, yet on public service bands all is normal. If there is a upconverter in this I think it has gone bad.

 

[spongella]

Does your SDR Play have a switchable preamp? Have you figured out the problem yet?

 

[Comptech]

It appears to be a software problem. After unistalling everything and starting over everything is fine. My guess is a driver problem. All is well again.

 

[mikelib]

Comptech, What software radio RU using? I use mine with SDRSharp.

I just got SDRPlay working with ADS-B, I can track all of the air traffic above my home from around 50 miles out. Working on getting the ADS-B antenna from flightaware, to improve the receiving range. I am about 30 miles north of Atlantic City airport, 60 miles west of Philly airport and 50 south of Newark airport and around 90 miles south of JFK.

 

[Comptech]

I use SDRSharp as well.

 

[N6BY]

My SDR Play from Ham Radio Outlet arrived today! Looking forward to playing with it soon.

 

[Comptech]

My SDR Play from Ham Radio Outlet arrived today! Looking forward to playing with it soon.

You will like it. Do yourself a favor and get some cheap clip on RF chokes from amazon and load up your USB cable. I also made a poor mans faraday cage for the play with some aluminum foil.

 

[N6BY]

You will like it. Do yourself a favor and get some cheap clip on RF chokes from amazon and load up your USB cable. I also made a poor mans faraday cage for the play with some aluminum foil.

Will do.

My other problem is RFI from my solar panels and inverter. Should be able to use the SDR Play to help reduce that. But.... all my neighbors have solar panels because the builder put them on all the homes here. Fortunately the closest neighbor is 100 feet away.

A few months back, QST had an extensive article about solar panel noise reduction. Minimizing the noise was quite involved.

 

[Comptech]

In that case put some chokes on your coax also. Should not hurt UHF or VHF High much, but VHF low and HF will need them.

 

[N6BY]

Chokes will arrive tomorrow.

Was up till 5 AM last night trying out software on the SDR Play. SDR Uno seemed quite unintuitive, and I actually had to read the manual to use it. HDSDR and SDRSharp were much more intuitive. So far I think I prefer SDRSharp.

 

[N6BY]

I have been spending so much of my free time with the SDR Play that I have mostly stopped watching TV. Love this thing!

Strung a wire between my rooftop and an Oak tree with a 9:1 balun and the 80 meter band comes in well. Was up late listening to 3.970 LSB. I still need to get an HF transceiver -- maybe an Icom 7300 is in my future.

Also have found some interesting stuff (to me anyway) with my 70cm Yagi. Among other things on UHF, I picked up the San Francisco International airport terminal and ground operations 100 miles away. (Not the air to ground tower).

Anyway, does anyone know of any SDR software that has tone squelch?

 

[KE4EST]

Anyway, does anyone know of any SDR software that has tone squelch?

I don't, but if you find one please post it.

Also, which chokes did you end up ordering?

 

[N6BY]

I don't, but if you find one please post it.

Also, which chokes did you end up ordering?

Will do. The audio spectrum display in HDSDR makes it easy to determine the correct tone. Just no way to get the SDR program to use it -- yet. I'll probably find a way to accomplish it and will post how.

Not sure if these are the best, but I ordered 'Bluecell Pack of 15 Magnetic Ferrite Core Cord RFI EMI Noise Suppressor Cable Clip (13mm inner diameter)'.

 

[KE4EST]

Thanks Brett!

 

[Comptech]

Those are the same ones I ordered for my feedline. Also choked my usb cable with the same except 5 mm.

 

[N6BY]

I don't, but if you find one please post it....

There is a CTCSS Decoder / Squelch Plugin for SDR# listed here: http://airspy.us/SDR1/Plugins.htm But according to what I read, SDR# plugins don't work with the SDRPlay.

I found a comparison review of the AirSpy, SDRPlay, and HackRF. The author compared almost every conceivable frequency band and configuration in the review, and it is quite a long read. http://www.rtl-sdr.com/review-airspy-vs-sdrplay-rsp-vs-hackrf/

In general, he found that the SDRPlay had better sensitivity in some scenarios, but it struggled with overloading and images/aliases of strong transmissions. This matches what I have seen with my SDRPlay. My house is about 1 1/2 miles from an FM radio station, and I've noticed aliases of pager transmissions all over the place. They frequently interfere with the weaker signals I want to receive.

Because of the SDRPlay's overloading and non-compatability with SDR# plugins, I went ahead and ordered an AirSpy. Besides the CTCSS plugin, there are several others available that I would find useful. Will probably keep the SDRPlay because it covers below 24 MHz and the AirSpy requires a separate up-converter for that.

 

[mikelib]

Brett,

Have you tried the SDRuno yet??

Mike WA2ACV

 

[N6BY]

Brett,

Have you tried the SDRuno yet??

Mike WA2ACV

Yes, but I spent very little time with the software. The interface seemed a bit bizarre at first, so I had to read the manual. From what I've read, SDRPlay has some ambitious plans for it.

Another program I tried to use that I would place in the "head scratcher" category is SDR-Console, which was written by the same guy who wrote "Ham Radio Deluxe". Its free for now, but eventually there will be a price tag on it. I tried it and struggled for quite some time to get sound to my speakers instead of VB-Cable. Eventually I got sound but didn't see any real advantage to using it. Its supposed to be able to decode some of the digital ham radio modes, but I didn't get it working.

What I would really like to see, is an SDR program that directly handled many of the digital modes without having to pipe audio to another program.