I’ve had an RTL-SDR Blog V3 SDR for a few years, but I haven’t blogged much about it beyond the article on SSB. In the intervening years, RTL-SDR Blog has come out with V4 of the dongle, a software defined radio device that one might misidentify as a USB flash drive except for the SMA antenna jack.
It’s really an amazing device, covering from 500 kHz up 1.766 GHz. With software, it supports SSB and digital noise reduction.
I decided on the SDR Sharp (SDR#) software to run on my tablet PC back with the V3 dongle and continued with it for V4. Installation is a bit complicated, requiring multiple items to be installed. All I can say is read the instructions carefully and follow exactly. It went smoothly this time, compared to a real mess with the old one.
There is a long list of improvements for V4, detailed on the product data sheet. Notable are improved sensitivity and notch filters to reduce strong broadcast band interference.
I got through the software installation and hooked it up briefly to my new 40-foot outdoor antenna. I got some stations, including a very weak one from Radio France on 21580 MHz. I compared the signal with my Qodosen DX-286 and boosting the gain on the dongle allowed it to surpass the DX-286. It got my attention.
As time permits I’ll post some videos and experiences.