[OZAPRS] VK3XCI -10 (-15)

Ray aprs at exemail.com.au
Fri Dec 4 07:35:44 AEDT 2020


Liz,
You highlight the problems faced by broadband and cheap receivers like 
the dongle. My ADS-B antenna has a shorted stub internally so that tends 
to act as a BPF to keep most other RF at bay but it wasn't enough to 
stop a not-so-nearby lightning strike frightening the dongle to death. 
It took about three weeks after the strike for the dongle to finally 
die. I had another dongle die quite recently but I don't know the cause 
- perhaps just one of those things. I've since bought a more expensive 
unit in a metal case. Is it any better? I don't know, but it should be 
more thermally stable than the cheap units.

My RPi behaved like your Pine64 in that a reboot didn't get the dongle 
back to life, I also needed a power cycle but that was as simple as 
pulling a fuse in the shed. Not so ideal for a remote site!!

Ray vk2tv

On 3/12/20 6:52 pm, Liz wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Dec 2020 14:30:29 +1100
> Norm McMillan <vk3xci at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The remote Pi0W > Dire Wolf|rtl_fm > RTL-SDR proved too unreliable.
>> for some reason rtl_fm or the dongle itself kept hanging up. It would
>> run for weeks without a proble then drop out twice a day. Anyone got
>> any ideas?
> Yes. Stray EMF.
>
> Living next to an industrial enterprise my RTL-SDR would lock up, need
> not just rebooting the pine64 hardware, but dropping the power to the
> dongle. That would mean physically pulling out the usb cables, and
> power to the usb hub and the pine64.
>
> New QTH, farmland. Been running from January to late November without
> hanging up. Major storm on Saturday was the first dropout of the
> RTL-SDR. Of course we were away at the time.
>
> If you are going to have a remote device then something you can dial /
> ssh into and cut the power for 10 secs to the SOC and RTL-SDR would be
> needed. I recall looking for one but never getting one.
>
> Liz
> VK2XSE
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