TV Rabbit Ears Works Well

Useful information regarding antennas for SDR products.
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robrob
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2016 1:10 pm

TV Rabbit Ears Works Well

Post by robrob » Sat Nov 19, 2016 1:23 pm

I tried a TV rabbit ears antenna (has VHF ears and a UHF loop) while waiting for connectors to set up a proper antenna. I had an SMA male to F female (cable TV connector) adapter to make the connection between the SDRPlay RSP and the antenna's F male connector.

I was surprised how well the rabbit ears worked with the SDRPlay RSP. It works great in the VHF service band, wide FM broadcasts and UHF traffic. It even pulls in ADS-B signals. But I was really surprised that I could pull in some Medium Wave AM and short wave.

For a limited space indoor antenna you could definitely do worse than a set of rabbit ears.
Last edited by robrob on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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g1hbe
Posts: 494
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:28 pm
Location: Cheshire, UK

Re: TV Rabbit Ears Works Well

Post by g1hbe » Sun Nov 20, 2016 11:32 am

I took a 'rabbit ears' TV aerial with me on holiday, along with my laptop and my then-current toy the FunCubeDongle Pro+. I was into UHF satellites at the time and if I set the lengths of the ears correctly (one quarter wave each), reception of the 250 MHz sats was very good. At full length they were just right for 144 MHz and fully-closed they were 6 inches each and worked well at 450 MHz.
For MW(AM) I changed over to my multi-ferrite aerial.

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Andy

bubblegumpi
Posts: 49
Joined: Fri Oct 14, 2016 11:41 pm

Re: TV Rabbit Ears Works Well

Post by bubblegumpi » Sat Nov 26, 2016 1:11 pm

How do you decode the digital signals? I hear them on UHF VHF but have no idea what they are. I just built a yagi ant. that I didn't think was going to work, but instead is the best antenna I have.

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robrob
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Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2016 1:10 pm

Re: TV Rabbit Ears Works Well

Post by robrob » Sun Nov 27, 2016 1:58 am

Some of the digital signals on VHF and UHF are trunked radio systems. They have a control channel that puts out a continuous digital signal which controls the radios on the system. The voice data is transmitted on several other frequencies and is usually intermittent. http://www.unitrunker.com/ can be used with two receivers (one for the control channel, the other for the voice) to monitor the signals.
Last edited by robrob on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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Alakey
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Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2017 12:47 pm

Re: TV Rabbit Ears Works Well

Post by Alakey » Tue Nov 07, 2017 12:58 pm

I tried to use my rabbit ears from home in my RV when I was on vacation, I was dissatisfied. Are there assumptions for Indoor antennas for RV?
Last edited by Alakey on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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