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TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Leading Digital TV Industry Publication
— 01-02/2015
—
TELE-audiovision.combetter. Aircraft communica-
tions are of very short du-
ration with minimal words
exchanged, so you have to
be very quick and move the
frequency cursor selector
around the band quite fre-
quently. Pilot and ground sta-
tion traffic will be found in the
118 – 137 MHz portion of the
band so keep that in mind.
With experience you’ll even-
tually find commonly-used
frequencies where you can
sit back and wait patiently for
the next radio transmission
from a pilot or air traffic con-
trol tower. An outside antenna
mounted well above ground is
almost mandatory to enjoy
this portion of the band with
any success.
Global warming, whether
man-made or not has re-
sulted in an uptick of Mother
Nature’s wrath in all portions
of the globe. Not a day goes
by without media reports of
some area of the world un-
der siege from catastrophic
meteorological,
geological
or oceanographic events. To
stay informed, especially dur-
ing emergencies such as fire,
floods, mudslides, tornadoes,
ice storms, tsunamis, earth-
quakes, and hurricanes the
dongle radio is your pipeline
to important information as
it is happening. During emer-
gencies the public service
sector shifts into high gear,
responding to flooded ar-
eas, downed power lines and
trees, attending and rescuing
that the software provides.
HDSDR is another of the
popular software application
programs available from the
Internet and presents quite a
different appearing operating
screen but has many com-
monalities with SDR# such
mode (AM, FM, USB, LSB,
CW etc.), bandwidth, vol-
ume, noise reduction, AFC,
squelch level, noise blanker,
soundcard selection, and slid-
ers for adjusting the spec-
tral/waterfall displays. One
conspicuous difference is
the large S (Signal Strength)
meter which comes with a
calibration protocol for those
analytical types. Whether you
choose SDR# or HDSDR is a
personal preference but why
not utilize both as I do? They
are both excellent performers
but you still may prefer one
over the other. Note that both
programs have a Frequency
Manager option which allows
the user to store an unlimited
amount of memories and re-
cording options for playback
at a later date.
Once you’ve become com-
fortable using the DVB-T don-
gle on the FM broadcast band
you can now navigate the oth-
er thousand or so megahertz
of the VHF/UHF band to satis-
fy your curiosity. Perhaps the
VHF aeronautical band is of
interest to you so let’s ride the
magic carpet a few megahertz
up to the 108 - 137 MHz por-
tion of the radio spectrum and
see what’s happening in the
skies above. Be sure to select
the AM mode as all voice com-
munications between pilots
and ground stations commu-
nicate via Amplitude Modula-
tion. Best time to listen to air
traffic is during rush hour and
the closer you are to a main
air traffic route or airport the
9. Activity abounds in the public
service portion of the VHF band
with signals from police, fire,
emergency medical services,
and pagers.
10. Adding a Ham It Up RF
upconverter in line with dongle
expands frequency range down
to 150 KHz.