| 18 Apr 2024 |
 z4non | yes, i was thinking of just using my wifi router antenna tbh, i laugh. | 17:22:20 |
| z4non | but it was sma-female so dat did not work. | 17:22:37 |
 AL9D | That is probably not regular SMA-female but RP-SMA | 17:23:09 |
| AL9D | If you want a really short antenna with decent performance on VHF, you will need to make or buy one with a loading coil. OTOH a lot of broadcast stations have a strong enough signal that you can get by with an antenna that isn't even close to resonant. | 17:24:50 |
| z4non | Oh, so that means even if im close to powerful transmitters/phone towers/and what else/ - i can "have a strong enough signal that you can get by" - so it breaks thru all the noise or what? | 17:27:06 |
| AL9D | Out-of-band signals mostly aren't the issue there. If you are trying to pick up a weak signal close to the internal noise floor of your equipment, then it is important to have a somewhat efficient antenna. Most FM broadcast stations within line of sight are strong enough that that probably won't be an issue and you could use e.g. a whip antenna cut for the 2 m ham band with adequate performance even though it is not even close to resonant at ~100 MHz (3 m) | 17:33:40 |
| AL9D | (and even though performance of that will be even worse using it without much of a groundplane) | 17:33:52 |
| AL9D | I have used a rubber duck antenna for 2m to listen to FM broadcast. Performance was poor but with most nearby stations it still worked. I don't know why you would do that though just to listen to broadcast FM when almost any radio will give way better battery life than the RPi + RTL-SDR.. | 17:36:35 |
| z4non | Indeed. It is redundant. Maybe even silly. Thought was to have radio when there was/is no internet via the pi4. Way easier to just buy a fm radio yes. | 17:38:49 |
| AL9D | Then if you take the dipole along you can use the Pi+SDR to receive weather satellite images :) | 17:43:44 |
| z4non | that was also one of my aims, but wasn't sure if i needed proper gear for that and any license. But yes that is one example of why i want it built into my pi-box :) | 17:45:02 |
| AL9D | No license | 17:45:20 |
| z4non | ok. nice:D | 17:45:27 |
| AL9D | I don't know what weird rules Sweden might have, but generally if you're not transmitting there is no problem. | 17:46:30 |
| z4non | Was kind of tricky to figure out of the laws yes but since the emergency freq are encrypted so one can not use it as a scanner like that anyways. And it is not the goal. So if i was to DL images from sat i guess i would need a proper setup as u explained - so i would have to have it externally. | 17:48:43 |
| z4non | With loading coil etc. I gotta research all that because its almost greek to me:) | 17:49:22 |
| AL9D | Loading coil is only needed for using an antenna too short to be resonant otherwise. For weather sat VHF downlinks just extend the dipole legs to make a 1/2 wave dipole. | 17:51:16 |
| AL9D | There are I think 4(?) currently-operating ones with VHF downlinks that you can easily receive without any special high-gain antennas or downconverters or the like. 3(?) old NOAA satellites with legacy analog downlinks and then Meteor M2-4 with a higher-resolution digital downlink. | 17:55:45 |
| z4non | Yes i think you're correct. 3 or 4. Believe this chap mentions it actually. https://youtu.be/icADyjm3PBE | 18:01:16 |
| z4non | Thanks for insight though, duly noted, appreciate the help:) | 18:02:12 |
| z4non | * Yes i think you're correct. 3 or 4. Believe this chap mentions it actually. edit: or maybe it was another video. https://youtu.be/icADyjm3PBE | 18:03:55 |
| AL9D | FWIW I have tried the NOAA analog downlinks a couple times with good success but never set up an automated pipeline for it. Haven't tried the new Meteor satellite yet but probably will in the next few days. | 18:08:16 |
| z4non | Oh that is for me years away probably. But im currently starting the research into it. | 18:16:26 |
| AL9D | Just get set up on your computer with the SDR and whatever software you like (I mostly use gqrx but it is buggy and not very featureful and I can't recommend it really) and start playing with it | 18:24:48 |
| 19 Apr 2024 |
|  AlexDeLorenzo.dev joined the room. | 07:38:24 |
| AlexDeLorenzo.dev set a profile picture. | 08:01:52 |
|  Dreamer X joined the room. | 20:11:01 |
| 22 Apr 2024 |
 Oštoba | In reply to @al9d:pikaviestin.fi
Just get set up on your computer with the SDR and whatever software you like (I mostly use gqrx but it is buggy and not very featureful and I can't recommend it really) and start playing with it I used gqrx to listen to ham radios. And then when i started with satellites i switched to sdrAngel, very useful tool. | 12:41:02 |
 petrkr | Looks very nice, especially it should run in linux | 12:56:12 |
| 23 Apr 2024 |
|  Sluffer set a profile picture. | 01:29:10 |
