I bought a Mini DVB-T Stick (digital TV stick), plugged it into the USB port on my Mac, planning to play with Software Defined Radio (SDR), The installation process is briefly recorded below.

Today I used the open-source software Gqrx on Mac OS, “Gqrx is a software defined radio receiver powered by the GNU Radio SDR framework and the Qt graphical toolkit.” The download address is http://gqrx.dk/download. The latest version of the software is now 2.2.0, so I got the package gqrx-2.2.0.dmg, After decompressing, I got Gqrx.app, and just copied it to the Applications directory.

Launch the Gqrx program. The first time you use it, a device selection dialog will pop up. At this point, just select “Generic RTL2832U” from the list. It should be noted that the digital TV stick is best plugged directly into the computer’s USB port. I initially plugged it into a USB HUB, and the device was not recognized. I struggled with it for quite a while.

Next, use the default settings and set the frequency to a nearby FM broadcast. I chose 84.7 MHz here, then clicked the round power button in the top left corner, The signal was received very normally. It’s really simple.

Later, I tried the aviation band and found that the original antenna was not very effective, There was too much noise, and basically no signal could be heard. So I pulled out the antenna and tried a longer one. I happened to have this MR73S DIAMOND 144/430MHz on hand, After swapping it, it looked like this. Even for a station further away, there was no problem, The sensitivity of the FM broadcast signal increased significantly, and there was no noise at all.

I tried the aviation band again and listened to the nearby Haneda area. It improved quite a bit compared to just now, and the voice was much clearer. Combined with Flightradar24, I tuned to the Tower frequency, “Clear to Land, Japan Air 92”, Hehe, the sense of immersion is excellent.

This small device costing only a few dozen RMB is quite worth it, I guess my Tecsun radio will have more rest time from now on. However, the effect on the aviation band is still not as good as the ICOM R6, so I can only look forward to continuous software improvements.

End

Postscript 2014/11/03　Upgrade to Gqrx 2.3.1 to get Squelch function