[lenlab]

Rabbit73,

I bought the same dongle. As I said I have it working on my win10 desktop with SDR# (haven't tried other software) and my 2 old laptops with XP and Linux and various software.

On my Dell XP laptop I have installed the simple RTL Scanner and ran it with my antenna feed to get a scan of my VHF spectrum. As soon as I can I will show the results on this forum and elsewhere.

7.1 =175.25
11.1 = 199.25
13.1 = 204.25

 

[rabbit73]

Rabbit73,

I bought the same dongle.

I added an SMA to F adapter cable for the antenna connection.

Try setting the gain at 25 dB. Click on View > Preferences > set gain to 25 dB > click OK

Try it first without the amp, then with the amp.

 

[rabbit73]

I am feeding with a VHF Yagi and a home built grey hoverman without the VHF tophats. I combine the two antennas outside the house. No preamp.

This is the scan of the antenna feed without the FM filter and distro amp:

That's a lot of noise interference, len.

Rabbit,

I receive 13.1 very well. However 11.1 I can't receive and 7.1 is spotty. So whatever it is does impact my viewing.

Your scan shows exactly that situation. 13 is mostly in the clear, 11 looks not likely, and 7 is maybe.

 

[rabbit73]

Using SDRsharp for Noise Interference Measurements

SDRsharp can also be used to look for noise. It can't show all of VHF-High at once, but it can show part of a channel and the adjacent noise. This is my channel 7:

a closer look:

My channel 9 is much weaker; it's marginal and can't always be received.

The signal is weaker than -45 dB, and is less than 15 dB above the noise floor; not enough SNR.

One nice thing about the spectrum analyzer is that it tells you if the channel is there. If you do a channel scan with your TV tuner and it doesn't pick up a channel, you don't know if the channel is there or not. The spectrum analyzer answers that question.