Software Defined Radio (SDR), what are you doing with it?

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ZL2DanF

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#3440303 5-Dec-2025 07:33

ZL2DanF:

I started mucking around with SDR back in 2019 when FlightAware sent me one of their ADSB kits.

Back in 2022 I installed a RaspPi3 SDR USB stick & External Antenna to Crater Hill Repeater site overlooking Scott Base only for their IT Manager to fly down at the start of the new season to supply FR24 & FlightAware provided gear. The supplied gear went in & my RaspPi I was intending to donate ended coming home with me. My understanding the supplied FR24 & FA gear is still working away happily down there providing coverage of about 100 or so nautical miles

More recently, ive got 2x RaspPis in a rack mount kit each with their own RTL-SDR Blog V3 R860 RTL2832U usb stick

1x RaspPi/Stick dedicated to ADSB – Feeding to the usuals (FlightAware, FlightRadar24 etc)
1x RaspPi/Stick dedicated to Marine AIS – Feeding vessel locations to MarineTraffic.com, VesselFinder.com & ShipExplorer.com

Each SDR USB stick is connected to their own external antenna by cnt240 50ohm cable
Working out so far so good – hoping to add some filtering soon to hopefully tidy up and increase receive sensitivity. The sticks tend to get hot, so have a small fan sitting on rack providing some air movement – long term, ill need to look at something more permanent/elegant – Ive also found out the hard way to get decent industrial microSD cards as the RaspPis tend to chew through the cheaper ones after a while

In the rack mount kit, I have 2x spare RaspPi slots so busy thinking up my next idea – maybe weather or go down the Ham/HF/Amateur rabbit hole…not sure yet, open to ideas/suggestions

Cheers,
DanF

I also must echo the sentiments from previous poster (shanes #2428554) – My better half’s eyes were also quick to glaze and/or roll over when I was “nerding out” setting up the adsb at home, followed with the usual expletives to get off the roof– But, now jolly quick to quiz me what plane is buzzing over. Bloody handy tool as we still have a few ice-friends so good to keep an eye on them and give them a bit of crap if/when their flights get boomeranged. I also, got a heck of a surprise when the better half followed up with the suggestion to maybe add a picture frame always on tablet or one of those ticker displays for air traffic to display the flight details – I guess I got myself a a keeper 😊

Oblivian

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#3440304 5-Dec-2025 07:41

I'm under the northern path of Christchurch and have considered a led matrix or similar to do that. There's a few sneaky quazi scrapers/api python out there to do that.

When I become known as the geek tracking, you find all the closest plane people. They're the ones suddenly asking what's that that's not on public radar they're wanting info on. and play it down as silly any other time.

shanes

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#3446984 24-Dec-2025 21:00

ZL2DanF:

I also must echo the sentiments from previous poster (shanes #2428554) – My better half’s eyes were also quick to glaze and/or roll over when I was “nerding out” setting up the adsb at home, followed with the usual expletives to get off the roof– But, now jolly quick to quiz me what plane is buzzing over. Bloody handy tool as we still have a few ice-friends so good to keep an eye on them and give them a bit of crap if/when their flights get boomeranged. I also, got a heck of a surprise when the better half followed up with the suggestion to maybe add a picture frame always on tablet or one of those ticker displays for air traffic to display the flight details – I guess I got myself a a keeper 😊

I have a 22" touchscreen on the wall in the kitchen displaying Homeassistant, I added Virtual Radar Server as a page for the better half

scottjpalmer

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#3447236 26-Dec-2025 09:20

I started a new thread on radiosonde weather balloon tracking which has been more popular than expected, SDR has opened up so many possibilities.

I have only had RTL-SDR Blog devices until recently but grabbed a couple of Airspy R2s and a Mini on Black Friday special. I need to play more but on first impression the 6/10MHz of bandwidth is niiiiice.

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