SDRUno going well on Mac, a couple of minor nits
Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:35 pm
Yesterday I bought an SDRplay RSP2 and installed SDRUno in Windows 10 under Parallels 13 on my MacBook Pro laptop running macOS 10.12.5 at my home in the Los Angeles, California area. For an antenna, I have a roughly 50-foot longwire strung outside with a plain wire as a lead-in, and bought a couple of connectors at the shop to attach it to the SDRplay. On the recommendation of the shop staff, I installed a ground rod outside and connected this to the SMA plug going into the SDRplay.
After a few minutes of getting oriented, the SDRplay and SDRUno seem to be running fine. Commercial FM stations came in quite fine (though I had to tweak the FM settings), though interestingly I couldn't pick up any of the stations running HD Radio (which I gather uses a proprietary scheme). Local NOAA weather station also came in well, as did several channels of Family Radio Service. What I could find on the 2-meter amateur band didn't seem to be human-listenable transmissions.
As for HF, I'll have to keep working with it a bit before drawing conclusions. As is well-known, propagation conditions right now are not great. WWV and WWVH seemed to be under more noise than I've remembered the past few days with my Sony ICF-2010 receiver, but I haven't done side-by-side comparisons with them yet. I did notice across the HF spectrum that at times I consistently heard a single station playing music in the background even when I changed frequencies and bands. I suspect this is probably a commercial broadcaster close to me.
So I'll keep working with the SDRplay. At this point the issues I'm working:
-- How to suppress the interfering station and/or improve signal strength relative to noise in the HF spectrum. Maybe a balun or tuner for the antenna? Or a better antenna in general (keeping in mind that my horizontal space is limited to about 50 feet overall)? Or are there SDRUno settings to play with?
-- Changing the frequency digit by digit seems to rely on use of a scroll wheel on the mouse. I'm just using the touchpad on my MacBook, and I haven't figured out alternates if any.
After a few minutes of getting oriented, the SDRplay and SDRUno seem to be running fine. Commercial FM stations came in quite fine (though I had to tweak the FM settings), though interestingly I couldn't pick up any of the stations running HD Radio (which I gather uses a proprietary scheme). Local NOAA weather station also came in well, as did several channels of Family Radio Service. What I could find on the 2-meter amateur band didn't seem to be human-listenable transmissions.
As for HF, I'll have to keep working with it a bit before drawing conclusions. As is well-known, propagation conditions right now are not great. WWV and WWVH seemed to be under more noise than I've remembered the past few days with my Sony ICF-2010 receiver, but I haven't done side-by-side comparisons with them yet. I did notice across the HF spectrum that at times I consistently heard a single station playing music in the background even when I changed frequencies and bands. I suspect this is probably a commercial broadcaster close to me.
So I'll keep working with the SDRplay. At this point the issues I'm working:
-- How to suppress the interfering station and/or improve signal strength relative to noise in the HF spectrum. Maybe a balun or tuner for the antenna? Or a better antenna in general (keeping in mind that my horizontal space is limited to about 50 feet overall)? Or are there SDRUno settings to play with?
-- Changing the frequency digit by digit seems to rely on use of a scroll wheel on the mouse. I'm just using the touchpad on my MacBook, and I haven't figured out alternates if any.