How to listen into radio signals from around the world with an SDRplay box and a length of wire

hi my name is Pete wood I am seven PM W is my radio call sign here in the UK and I work for a design spot RS Components and two years ago I passed my ham radio license the foundation level and haven't done much in said really I need to recently with this lock down I been at home working more and I picked up my ham radios again so little bad friends like this handhelds that do two meter and 70 centimetres UHF VHF and quite enjoying trying to connect into repeaters and talking to people and then I got to talk to my friend John is dr play and he reminded me about the SDR play box that I have and I thought actually I should probably pick up and have a bit of a tinker so this is it if you don't know what one of these is it's basically a software-defined radio box that allows you to connect your computer and pick up transmissions from all over the world I guess you've got the right antennas and it's actually until now I have anything kind of using this little alone Mac mount that's for car it does the job and picks up a little bit of traffic from air bounce I can get the two meter and 70 stuff as well PMR kind of local signals but this is pretty limited what you can do so John said to me that perhaps I should try and experiment with putting up an antenna just a bit of wire in the garden and see what they cut like that 20 meter bank for example which apparently is quite busy especially the moment I guess a lot of people being at home so that basically involves me stretching a piece of wire up the garden getting up as high as I can and then connecting the other end to the SDR play here and then I should be able to receive lots of cool transitions to all transmissions to HC were tuned into so let's have a go let's see what we can do and in Christ few tools and some wire will see you stuffing up the share fat little ferret around the fans a few things so let's see what I managed to do so I'm gonna make my antennae out with a bit of what's actually earthing lawyer because it's the longest piece of cable my shed and we're gonna stretch this out down the garden attach it to the top of the tree you find another point try and get it off far off the ground as possible will be about three or four meters if we're lucky maybe four could be fine anyway we'll get that and then that will be the base of our antenna roll this out so this is the end of the cable and this is my SDO play RSP 1a and the connector is an SMA female so I need to get this in to the center of that which I probably could do one of the strands probably not going to give me the best result so what I'm going to do is I'm going to use an adapter so I've actually got Nick it's an SI 2 3 9 or anyway so UHF connector so a female UHF connector on one side on the other side there's an SMA male on that I'll go straight into yes your play box so the idea is I take this into the the antenna wire that I've stretched up and I need to put it into the center pin here get that nice and tight make sure that I don't touch and at the outside because why I'm going to do is I'm going to do a separate ground if I hear as close to the radio as possible and if I just and that around with any luck I'm hoping that I should be able to wedge it into the center there we go that's worked quite well nothing's touching the site so that's it that's coming up and then let's do the ground so this is my ground I just got another link the wire basically and I'm gonna put this onto the little crocodile clip here and I'm gonna ground it out from here and the other end of this is gonna get hammered into the ground into it with a metal pole or bit a copper pipe people can find it and that that is almost as done then with the antenna okay so that's made up so that will basically ground out to there and the other end trying to screw in now and then my ground will go on there so we've got a piece of pipe and we're gonna stick that into the ground and then this is the bit that goes to the sto play where I'm gonna ground out or out hot and then apparently making it wet makes it ground better so hope you get better okay so I'm all set up and ready to go I'm tuned into the 20 meter band here and that's done this setting here so if you click on bands we've got 20 meters which puts in here 14 megahertz and it's just over here what 205 kilohertz so basically what I need to do now is go up cross and press play and what and we've already got something so which is pretty cool now there are tons of settings on here that I need to learn how to play with to get to clean up the signal I can step through and reduce the number of kilohertz that I'm going across but ultimately what you need to look for is this is that these blips are all these blips or signals basically so you need to click on those and see what you can pick up but the game pretty much high here so I know there's loads of other settings are just neater to heaven Romeo Delta roll on your side nothing to do outside [Music] Limited all universe [Music] from the abundant if you took it very okay MA no relative comfort sounds French so I guess overseas for French at the bar afternoon here in sample sejoon UK to clean with my senior play and it's definitely a massive improvement so I was using this wit antenna little mag Mel before which was great for two meters and 70 centimeter hand bands and pants on the air traffic actually to be fair was getting some on that but I'd never really got anything in the HF world so this antenna here diffusing his piece of wire I found that my shed what amazing results I'm so pleased with that and this was so simple to do and as you can see on the video they're tuning into the 20 meter and I was able to pick up traffic from salmon-like all over the world and I need to do a lot more learning around how to use the console via TR console but I've got the basics and I was surfing around and clicking on things and I heard the words Guatemala great if we caught that for I think I heard some guy in the US somewhere in Southern California but a sounds of it and I certainly European traffic as well so hams in France Italy and I think Spain as well and Saturdays I understand it's generally a pretty good day to do this kind of thing because on a Saturday a lot of the ham enthusiasts they are doing these competitions and they trying to make as many concerts they can around the world and the 20 meter balanced things are quite popular one for that so so yeah had great fun it's a relatively expensive thing to get in show you know you don't need a license to do just listening into this stuff so anybody can have a go this SD I'll play this is an RSP 1a it allow you to go from I think it's one kilohertz up to two gigahertz it's a really white bands you can pick up all kinds of stuff and I live outside in the countryside in UK here but you're nearer towns or cities you probably get a lot more than I do but HF you know generally you can be anywhere and get some with you cool stuff so I encourage you to get one of these we sell them RS Components I'll put a link into their video and have a tinker and you never this might be your first step into the world of ham radio so thank you very much I hope you enjoyed that this is m7 pmw mic 7 popper November whiskey 7 3

Channel: RS DesignSpark

Views: 26,764

Keywords: ham radio, software defined radio, rf, 20m, experiment, hack, radio, enthusiast, hobbies, fun, tech, technology

Id: rHajOvAk64c

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020