£13 SDR USB Receiver

Having seen a £13 sdr USB SDR Dongle mentioned on G4VXE's blog  I decided that I would get one to try out especially as it covered 64 to 1700MHz. One was ordered from Jersey via ebay which arrived a few days later

Using the guide by G4WFR I downloaded SDR# dev version and a zip file containing Zadig from http://m9t.co.uk/zadig.zip (this avoided having to install 7-zip) . I spent a lot of time trying to get SDR# to give me the RTL2832 USB option rather than the RTL2832 TCP option until I discovered the windows idiot guide which although not being totally upto date gave me the clues I needed . After modifying the config file I could control the RTL2832 and use it as a receiver and spent time trying it out on the local repeaters, beacons and FM broadcast stations. After filling the memories with stations I thought it would be nice to be able to automatically scan this. Searching the internet led me to the K5DEV version of SDR# which provides scanning ability enabling the local 2m and 70cm repeaters to be monitored automatically.