Transmission1

Greetings

I am seeking recommendations on hardware for receiving / scanning and decoding RTL/SDR DSD+ in North West England, I'm on wirral, not that I'd expect location to make any difference...

I've used pdw for pager messages successfully in the past so believe this endeavour shouldn't be too difficult. I've looked on amazon and found a range of products and wondered if anyone on here could shine their expert opinion over this purchase....

I have a budget of around 50 quid

Thanks in advance

Decided on the following, if anyone has any opinions or advice on getting started with this please let me know...

NooElec NESDR Mini 2 USB RTL-SDR & ADS-B Receiver Set, RTL2832U & R820T2 Tuner, MCX Input.

you can allways use flight radar for aviation ,and its free

Software-wise, I use SDR-sharp, then pipe it through DSD+ to decode the digital stuff. You need a way to route the audio from one program to the other, I use VB-Audiocable. From what I recall, you need to jiggeripoke with the drivers a bit to get it all going, this guide should get you going.

My RTL stick looks very similar to yours, but mine came with a little whip antenna instead of a telescopic one. I found I got a MASSIVE improvement from getting a little MCX to SMA jumper lead, and swapping over to a decent size magmount antenna.

That should work fine for DSD+ use.
By the way, there is no need to use SDR# if you dont want to, as DSD+ now includes FMP which is particularly good if using on an older (read, slower) laptop like I do.

And yes, you'll also need VBCable installed to pipe the output of the RTL stick / FMP into DSD+

Thanks
enCrypt

stanogs68, Freddie and DrumGeek...

Many thanks for your replies.. I've managed to sus it out and have had success both with un-encrypted DMR single slot and pager messages. Just need to spend time searching for other potentially interesting users, VBCable works really well, used DSD+ for the decode and CubicSDR for operating the device.

Would I be right in thinking you can buy a handheld set capable of listening to un-encrypted DMR users; provided it was setup with the required colour (CTCSS) setting and such?

Yes, there is the very popular TYTERA (Also called TYT) MD-380 or its successor the MD-390 with or without GPS.
I have a 380 and while it is a good radio, there is a bit of a learning curve getting your head around programming it if you're not familiar with how DMR works already.
These are essentially copies of corporate style radios and related corporate style software / usage but have been embraced by the Amateur community for operating through DMR repeaters.
There is also a really nice community running to develop various tweaks via firmware upgrades to the Tytera radios and they are quite cheap so a worthy investment AFAIC.

There are also the AOR DV1, Whistler Digital Scanners and various new(ish) Uniden models that all support (unencrypted) DMR listening
I have no experience of any of these I'm afraid but they're worth reading up on...

Thanks,
Mark...