From Newsgroup: rec.radio.amateur.misc

Just got one of these RTL-SDR dongles and I'm in over my head on the software side. Hardware I understand -- I maintained towers and switching equipment for three decades. But SDR# might as well be written in Klingon.

I'm using it with a simple discone on the roof (the antenna part I'm fine with). Getting good reception across the board but I don't understand half the display modes. Waterfall I get -- that makes visual sense. But the FFT settings, the gain calibration, the digital processing options... I'm used to knobs and needles, not sliders and drop-downs.

For context, I've been a traditional receiver guy forever. Grundig Satellit 750 for shortwave, various Uniden scanners for VHF/UHF. The SDR was my neighbor's kid's idea. He set up the basic software and then went back to college, so now I'm on my own.

Specific questions:
1. Is there a good beginner guide that assumes you know RF but not computers? 2. Best settings for monitoring in the 25-1700 MHz range? I'm mostly interested in VHF commercial and the shortwave bands.
3. Any way to log what I'm hearing automatically? I used to keep a paper logbook but the SDR seems like it should be able to do this digitally.

Running on an old ThinkPad with Linux (someone set it up, don't ask me which flavor). The dongle is the basic RTL2832U.

Thanks in advance. And yes, I know this question has probably been asked a thousand times. But the search function on Usenet is about as useful as it was in 1996, which is to say, I can't find anything.

73
--
Hal | 40.7°N | Grundig & patience
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