Surprise Radio: RTL-SDR Blog V4 SDR

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Kevin

See warning at the end of the post.

I’ve had an RTL-SDR Blog V3 SDR for a few years, but I haven’t blogged much about it beyond the article on SSB. In the intervening years, RTL-SDR Blog has come out with V4 of the dongle, a software defined radio device that one might misidentify as a USB flash drive except for the SMA antenna jack.

It’s really an amazing device, covering from 500 kHz up 1.766 GHz. With software, it supports SSB, FM RDS and digital noise reduction.

RTL-SDR Blog V4 SDR

I decided on the SDR Sharp (SDR#) software to run on my tablet PC back with the V3 dongle and continued with it for V4. Installation is a bit complicated, requiring multiple items to be installed. All I can say is read the instructions carefully and follow exactly. It went smoothly this time, compared to a real mess with the old one.

There is a long list of improvements for V4, detailed on the product data sheet. Notable are improved sensitivity and notch filters to reduce strong broadcast band interference.

I got through the software installation and hooked it up briefly to my new 40-foot outdoor antenna. I got some stations, including a very weak one from Radio France on 21580 MHz. I compared the signal with my Qodosen DX-286 and boosting the gain on the dongle allowed it to surpass the DX-286. It got my attention.

As time permits I’ll post some videos and experiences.

Update:

I installed SDRSharp on my desktop computer and the SDR works there too. I never thought I’d get anything amid all the RF noise, but it’s good.

Warning:

The device drivers provided for the RTL-SDR V4 (and likely V3) are incompatible with Windows 11.

The SDR will work, but the drivers create two significant problems for Windows.

  1. Windows Security cannot implement Core isolation Memory integrity, for more on the importance of this feature, refer to the Microsoft Support discussion. With the RTL-SDR drivers installed you will see a warning and if you attempt to turn on Memory integrity, there will be an error message referring to a list of incompatible drivers. Specifically the errant ones are:

    RTL2832U.sys
    RTL2832UBDA.sys

    The are quite old, dating back to 2009 and 2o1o. That’s the days of Windows 7.
  2. At least on my machine Windows Update will fail installing the 24H2 feature update. It will give error code 0xc1900101 – 0x40017, usually indicating a driver problem.

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Incoming Tool: UNI-T UT658DUAL USB LCD USB Type C Digital Tester

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Kevin
UNI-T UT658DUAL USB LCD USB Type C Digital Tester

Cheap thrill here ($21.99). This little fellow can evaluate the performance and capacity of a USB power bank, and by extension an emergency radio that can charge a USB device. I have no confidence in product promises for battery bank capacity. I know that some of them, based on their weight alone, have impossible capacity specifications. One example had an advertised capacity MORE THAN THREE TIMES the theoretical maximum based on its weight.

When this arrives next week, I probably won’t publish an article on it, but I will be using it to test some of the power banks/emergency radios I have.

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Killing the Noise

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Kevin

I believe, and I think most other shortwave listeners would agree, that the biggest problem facing our hobby today is noise, radio frequency interference (RFI) from other electronic devices.

Long Rambling Preface

Just sitting here typing on my wireless electronic keyboard, connected to a desktop PC, connected to two LED monitors, with a desk illuminated with an LED lamp, just to the right of a LCD weather station display, above a desk drawer containing an outlet strip with USB charging ports, sitting beside an AC adapter powering an 8-bay battery charger, wireless mouse, on top of a wireless PC speaker and an AC-powered Wi-Fi network extender, not to mention a smartphone, all within 3 feet of me, provides ample examples for potential for generation of RFI.

A few years back, I took three approaches to reduce the noise. I put a chair outdoors far away from the house with a 20 ft. wire up a tree antenna, I got an MLA-30+loop antenna installed at a far corner of the house with a shielded antenna lead in the window, and I went on an active search and destroy mission to find and eliminate the sources of the noise. That was because the first 2 approaches didn’t help.

The find and destroy approach had partial success. It discovered one particular device, a Nitecore D2 battery charger, that created more noise than everything else put together. It was beyond belief how bad it was, just plugged in, whether actively charging a battery or not. It saturated the whole house with noise so that the only way I could find it it was by singly turning off every breaker in the house, and once the offending circuit was found, I had to turn off and unplug every device and outlet strip until the noise stopped.

The other offending device was my electronic dog containment fence. It uses an Invisible Fence Boundary Plus® Dual Loop Transmitter to inject 10.7 kHz or 7.5 kHz signals into buried wires around the perimeter of my property. Those are high audio frequencies, not what we expect as radio. Nevertheless, the unit creates a raucous crackle on my radios everywhere between 4 and 6 MHz.

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I Need a New Battery! Mregb YD-819?

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Kevin
“I need a new battery! Can you hear me?”

I suppose you have to be a pretty old gamer to get the reference from Return to Zork. I really don’t need a new battery, but I wanted one. Technically the 81 kWh battery in my car will keep my phone charged over any foreseeable power outage.

Readers may remember that my last power bank purchase did not go well. Armed with a little more sophistication, I took another visit to Amazon for a battery whose weight was not totally at odds with the capacity in the device description.

Power-Bank-Solar-Charger – 42800mAh Portable Charger, Solar Power Bank, External Battery Pack 5V3.1A Qc 3.0 Fast Charger Built-in Super Bright Flashlight (Orange)

Mregb YD-819 Power Bank
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Zhiwhis ZWS-2415: Just Curious

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Kevin

I like puzzles, one of which is figuring out where radios come from.

Where Radios Come From

The ZWS-2415 got its FCC Type Acceptance under model HD-2415 by a Chinese company called Shenzhen Huedeli Electronics Co., Ltd.  The company’s website says they make weather radios, but none of the models they show are the typical emergency radio with a crank. I presume that they worked as an OEM for the ZWS-2415.

The HD-2415 FCC ID application shows a photo of the radio, indicating another brand it’s sold under, the Raddy SH-906 (adding a compass to the strap and deleting the accessory wire antenna):

Raddy SH-906
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Zhiwhis ZWS-2415: On Shortwave

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Kevin

The Zhiwhis ZWS-2415 is shipped with a 3-meter clip-on wire antenna, so that’s how I did my initial test today. I went up to the local pickleball court where there is a convenient picnic table and set up the wire antenna (not pulled taut) and three radios: the Zhiwhis ZWS-2415, an XHDATA D-109WB and my new Jstvro ATS25 max-Decoder.

I went out around 3:20 pm local time in central Virginia or 20:20 UTC.

XHDATA D-109WB, Zhiwhis ZWS-2415, Jstvro ATS25 max-Decoder

The XHDATA D-109 has a reputation as a good shortwave radio, but one plagued with overloading when operated in strong signal areas (like where I don’t live). It has also proven to do a good job with auto tune storage (ATS). It has an external antenna jack, but for this test I clipped the wire onto the end of the collapsed telescopic antenna. It tunes up to 3o MHz. I used its ATS to pick stations. The Music / Voice option was set for Voice.

In the center position is the Zhiwhis ZWS-2415, the prime focus of this exercise. The external antenna was clipped on the end of the collapsed telescopic antenna.

And on the right is the other new kid on the block, the Jstvro ATS25 max-Decoder, one that I’ve had very little time to study. Again the antenna was clipped onto the end of the supplied collapsed telescopic antenna.

All three radios have a feature that I very much appreciate when comparing radios, a MUTE button. It’s a >|| button in the D-109WB, a short press of the power button on the ZWS-2415 and a MUTE button on the touch screen of the ATS25.

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Zhiwhis ZWS-2415: First Impressions

Posted on January 26, 2025 by Kevin
Zhiwhis ZWS-2415: Mandatory Product Photo

Unboxing

It comes in a nice box with outstanding padding. Here are the photos and some initial comments.

Zhiwhis ZWS-2415 Emergency Radio Box
Zhiwhis ZWS-2415 Emergency Radio Box Padding
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