It's all about the Software

Over the last few days I have added a Diamond Discone Antenna which was initially performing well with Console when in my basement. Now the discone is mounted on the roof. But gradually, sensitivity seems to be very much deteriorated. One station in particular that I was able to listen to previously is now mostly noise. I believed this may have been due to the presence last week, all week long, of low hanging clouds. Today the sky is cloud free. But, the stations that I can now hardly receive using my RTL-SDR V3 with SDR-Console all come in well on my automobile radio. At one point I had about 35 listenable stations. Seems to be perhaps half that many now.

I have also found that the filters seem to have ceased functioning. Compounding matters, I see no response from trying to enable or disable the bias-T for my LNA (Also from RTL-SDR).

Trying to resolve this, I uninstalled and reinstalled the software several time. Since I had initially installed SDR# I installed that first and then SDR-Radio 3.1. That didn't work very well so I went back to 3.028. The filters don't work. I sometimes get a rules error when trying to enable bias-t. But other times I get the romeo found message. Yet I see no difference, and hear no difference either way.

I have tried to get trunking to work a couple of times. Each time SDR either # or Console, seems to be disabled or erratic afterward so I've done system restorations to reverse the effect of having a trunking program installed. Any idea why the filters don't work and why it seems to be dying?

Is this an example, perhaps, of the LNA increasing noise without increasing the quality of the audio signal? Or could it be the dongle going dead?

Seems to me the software is not liable to reduce signal pickup.
You could by not setting the gain correctly.
There is the possibility that a strong signal somewhere has desensed the dongle. A better antenna will show this, gain must be reduced considerably or filters added.
The antenna/cable/dongle could be faulty, substitution is the easy way to test.
Alan

Low hanging clouds - any rain? Any lightning? The LNA may be fried. Less likely the dongle may be fried. There is, of course, the possibility of changed gain settings. But there are no pictures showing the entire SDRC window with as much settings information as possible. So anything more than the above guesses is not worth pursuing.

{^_^}

At least no-one's accusing me of deteriorating...

That's a given. You made a basic mistake. You allowed yourself to get old. Welcome to the club.
{^_-}

Well, spoke too soon. After starting to setup memories in Console, the filters stopped working again.

swhendricks wrote: Sat Aug 28, 2021 9:38 am Well, spoke too soon. After starting to setup memories in Console, the filters stopped working again.

Sorry,

This is too vague. Please add screenshots to explain the problem, which filters, where, how?

This is becoming even more "interesting." Found that the LNA is apparently dead. It cost me 10DB in signal being plugged in. Bias T is on. Automatic Gain control was responsible for the disappearance of the numerous stations that I can receive. I took it off automatic and reduced the RF gain to around 30. In some cases the gain must be set even lower to receive the stations. I've requested a replacement LNA. Also, the low ceiling of clouds is BACK as is rain that is heavy at times. It is so heavy, at times, that it can knock my satellite internet off line momentarily (It's Starlink).

I suspect that the increase in signal (noise) is due to have a discone antenna now when before I was using a dipole. The noise floor dropped and the formerly invisible stations are back. The noise filters seem to be related to the AGC and they will work on some stations, but not others. The ACG under the filter box doesn't work whether turned on or not.

The NR4 actually works on this particular station, but not on every station. Is it normal that once a station is stored in a memory that the bandwidth of the filter cannot be changed unless that placeholder is cleared, the bandwidth set, and then restored as a memory?

Hi,

If you have a filter defined in a memory then it's applied when you select that memory but can be changed thereafter, just try dragging the filter with the mouse (big green bit at the top) or selecting another filter width.

As for NR - there are different algorithms which will work better depending on the noise itself.

Simon G4ELI wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:16 pm Hi,

If you have a filter defined in a memory then it's applied when you select that memory but can be changed thereafter, just try dragging the filter with the mouse (big green bit at the top) or selecting another filter width.

As for NR - there are different algorithms which will work better depending on the noise itself.

Thanks, That actually does work. That was how I tried to use the filters initially (like SDR#) and found that it didn't work.