Nooelec RTL-SDR, FM+DAB, DVB-T USB Stick Set with RTL2832U & R820T. Great SDR for SDR#, HDSDR, and Other Popular SDR Software Packages!

Wow. Just wow. I grew up engrossed in electronics and radio. I grew up with old fashioned radios. The big deal was having memories where we could "scan" multiple frequencies, one at a time, naturally. The holy grail device was a spectrum analyzer, which was hugely expensive. And now we have this SDR age. Wow!! It's almost too much to take in. The revolutionary step of going from monitoring one frequency and mode at a time to what is basically a spectrum analyzer on steroids is incredible. And at this price! I was skeptical due to the price, and the fact that computers generate large amounts of RF noise especially when there is a physical connection. My mind thinks "oh it's so small therefore it won't have much or any filtering hardware", because I'm still getting used to the concept of "oh, well, we'll just do much of what was once done in hardware, in software". I've been pleasantly surprised. How this will all work out for you depends heavily if not entirely on what software you use. The easiest route for me was Kali linux with that software that starts with a Q and is four letters long (why do open source folks use such silly names nobody can remember??). Seeing the spectrum pop up like that was sort of a dream come true, much like the dream of a spectrum analyzer. At first I used the antenna that came with it. I already knew this was very very minimalist, but also very portable. I had many other antennas around, but wanted to see how this one did. For me it was pretty pathetic, but is minimally acceptable for VERY local signals. For instance the police and fire station is about three blocks away and that was still hammering me so hard that I could actually see the 2nd and even 3rd order harmonics on the display. So cool! Then I started using better antennas. First a mobile for 144MHz and 440MHz. Nice upgrade there, especially since I already had it. The best update however was by using a discone antenna from Radio Shack (I really think this is the ONLY thing they make that's good these days). That changed everything. The incredible world that was opened up to me really blew my mind. Overkill really. It even allowed me to do ACARS -- And that's with the antenna indoors. At this price how can you go wrong? Do it!

For a cheap SDR receiver it works great. Just keep in mind that's exactly what is, a cheap receiver. You will not get nor should you expect to get high quality ham radio receive. This unit works well with SDR# on a Windows7 64bit machine, I have had no issues with it at all and for $20 I have well gotten my money's worth. I don't see it mentioned so I will say the antenna is approx 6inches tall from base to tip, and the antenna wire is about 2ft long with an MCX connector. I did open mine and verified it does in fact contain the R820T chip and a protection diode on the input. I have seen receive range from 23.9Mhz to 1900Mhz with no gaps in coverage. Setup is fairly easy and radioreference is a wealth of information to help you out. BTW if you intend to use this with unitrunker to track voice you will need 2 dongles.

This is a software defined radio RECEIVER. I works extremely well once you have the drivers and software properly installed and has features that usually cost much, much more. I a 71, have forgotten more about radio than I ever understood (*) and have learned a bunch from messing around with the NooElec RTL-SDR. I have a MAC and the first thing I did was to install a MacPorts driver and then Cubic SDR software. My "test" band was commercial FM and the dongle performed far beyond expectations...and my abilities..When I comes to Amateur Radio, this is the most cost effective radio equipment I have bought. I recommend this to EVERYONE who wants to learn about SDR and who wants an awesome way to listen to Shortwave, CB, the Amateur Bands, Aircraft and Marine Bands, etc., etc. Code, sideband (U and L,) I/O. and a bunch of other modes. 73, KW4EC

I picked this up in addition to an E4000 version. This one is generally better. The bottom end of this is in the 37MHz range. Don't expect to pick up long-wave or AM broadcasts. Picking some lower-end areas will either show up silent, with strange device noises, or maybe fail to open the device with libusb0. I can pick up ADS-B really well with this. Higher elevation and better antenna helps too, but this blows away the E4000 even with a favorable gap. Sensitivity is pretty good with this, and so FFT contrast is good. Also, trying kalibrate, this varies by as much as 22khz from reliable sources. That's mostly thermal issues on the low quality oscillator, however, I found this to be more consistent than the E4000. This was -22kHz, plus or minus 1kHz. That's pretty easy to work with. If it's not just because of where I'm sitting temperature wise, this might even sync with GPS on RTL-GNSS for those more daring, but it won't pick up PCS or higher freqs. This is generally a decent device. Sensitivity is better than decent. This has a very small antenna port, sort of a micro-pal connector. I haven't been able to find adapters to hook up other antennae to it. The alternative is an E4000 device, which I find to have better high-end range, but poorer sensitivity, and worse reception of aviation/radar signals such as ADS-B. I recommend picking up SDRsharp, because it just works. Run the "zadig" tool to associate your RTL device with WinUSB. Start SDRsharp and go into "Configure". Turn off RTL-AGC manually set tuner gain to 36dB. Set to an FM station, and use "WFM". Hit "play" and tinker with things until you're happy. You can find your shift value by setting your step size small, and then hit the center of the channel found, and see how much that differs from the formal channel frequency. I found a shift of 3000 was close for mine, and I did some tweaking of the FFT display to make signals more visible. Click and drag sideways to tune/scroll. Click once to set the center freq within the current display (max about 2.5MHz), or click top/bottom of the numbers in the freq. Alternatively, mouse wheel works great for tuning.

I got this for having my first soft ware defined radio. I use it for FM broadcast band monitoring, 49 MHz walkie talkie monitoring (AM mode and NFM mode), FRS radio, ham radio, and for weather forecasts on 162.55 MHz. The only thing about this is that the it should of came with a MCX male to Female connector, and a MCX male to BNC adapter. The software that came with it via download has FM broadcasts in stereo and some RDS decoding. I am planning on buying a better antenna and maybe a low gain preamp for this. The remote control that came with it is useless, ended up in the junk drawer until there is a way to use it for some TV app in the future. This is my first device that take MCX connectors, now I have to start collecting those and you cannot simply find them at a R. Shack. Sometimes the dongle runs hot, but not so bad and the software needs updating. I will plan on getting another one soon. I just want to remind you that this device is not compatible with Windows 8. Only for Windows 7 and earlier.