SDR newbie

I got one of those NooElec DVB-T dongles. I installed SDRSharp and basically didn't know what I was doing. I did find all the available radio channels with the WFM setting through blind luck.

I don't suppose there's any websites on what can be picked up in Ireland? Specifically the south west.

I'm madly out of my comfort zone as I've never even own a ham radio in my life.

GekkePrutser

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I got one of those NooElec DVB-T dongles. I installed SDRSharp and basically didn't know what I was doing. I did find all the available radio channels with the WFM setting through blind luck.

I don't suppose there's any websites on what can be picked up in Ireland? Specifically the south west.

I'm madly out of my comfort zone as I've never even own a ham radio in my life.

Well welcome to the hobby and enjoy The price of entry has never been as low with these dongles. And they are amazing in terms of capabilities, though their receive sensitivity and resolution leave a lot to be desired. They're also easily overloaded, in fact you'll probably want to put a WFM band blocking filter before them.

If you keep learning you'll find out what those things mean, basically they're not the best receivers but they are the best value for money by far. They're a great starting point. And SDR is a great technology.

To answer your question, you will find some ham radio activity between 144.000 and 146.000 MHz and 430.000-440.000. Particularly easy to receive are repeaters, you can find a current list here: http://www.irts.ie/cgi/repeater.cgi

The air band is also very interesting. But besides that most voice activity has mostly gone digital and usually encrypted which means there is no way to listen to it. Same with mobile phones, you can see the data streams but they are completely useless. You may be able to pick up some data stuff like pagers if those are still used here. And some other random stuff like taxis and baby monitors.

Anyway if you'd like to know more just ask and check this forum, a lot of your questions have been discussed pretty recently.

micko45

yes these are great, you can hook one up to a raspberry pi and attached it directly to an antenna, maybe up in your attic, and connect over wifi from your phone or laptop or what ever, look it up rtl-tcp.

Some frequencies you can look at,
420.000 to 480.000 -> lots of stuff, taxis, buses, etc.
118.000 to 130.000 -> airplanes and airports,
27.555 -> CB stuff.
28.000 to 29.500 10m Amateur radio,

See http://www.frequencydb.com/ for lots of them.

The IRTS have a contest this weekend on uhf/vhf, you should listen in to see if you can hear anything.
http://www.irts.ie/cgi/st.cgi?test_calendar

But you really need an decent antenna to make the most of it. Not those little pull up things that come with some of those SDR's. An external Discone is what i recommend, you can get one in maplins,

For me the sdr really shines when using on HF (below 30Mhz), as its world wide. I have an SDRPlay http://www.sdrplay.com and it is so much better than the cheaper ones, hooked mine up to 10 meter length of wire and its excellent.

Thanks for those frequencies lads. I was just blindly guessing last night and it was depressing. I do have a saorview aerial which I have hooked up to the dongle as I agree the little antennas are a joke.

WHL

If you are in Limerick, try 124.7 MHz AM. Shannon Low aero frequency. There should be plenty of activity there

Check out this WebSDR site, People are doing exactly what you're doing but installing the server software to make it available on the internet, truly fascinating software.

http://websdr.org/

I listen to it a lot when on night shift, the North American SDR's are very interesting because most of the transmissions are in English where 99% of European transmissions are Non English, there are far too many contests on European ham bands also.

Definitely I get a lot of entertainment listening to the Americans,

Sadly there are 0 Irish Web SDR stations.

This is a good Web SDR site too.

http://hackgreensdr.org:8901/