{"id":530,"date":"2015-04-27T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T00:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/04\/27\/sdr-dongle-modified-for-hf-watch-it-work-on-40-meters-video\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T13:17:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T03:17:55","slug":"sdr-dongle-modified-for-hf-watch-it-work-on-40-meters-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/04\/27\/sdr-dongle-modified-for-hf-watch-it-work-on-40-meters-video\/","title":{"rendered":"SDR Dongle Modified for HF.  Watch it work on 40 meters (VIDEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yDkMZQCUlZw?rel=0\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p> <strong>With SPRAT 162 by my side, armed with an FT37-43 trifilar wound transformer, I popped open the RTL-SDR dongle. I had hopes of being able to solder two tiny wires to the unused input pins (3 and 4) but I quickly realized that I was NOT going to be able to do that &#8212; they are far too small for me to work on. So I did what Ken Marshall G4IIB did: I took out the SMT caps going to pins 1 and 2 and soldered two small wires there. This will limit this dongle to HF only &#8212; if I want VHF\/UHF I&#8217;ll just spend another $13 dollars! You can see the results in the video above. <\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/IMGP2928.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/IMGP2928.jpg\" height=\"265\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"> <\/div>\n<p> <strong>I used the yellow stuff to hold the wires in place. It was later removed. <\/strong><br \/> <strong><\/strong><br \/> <strong>Tony Fishpool did a neater job. See his work here: <\/strong><br \/> <a href=\"https:\/\/dl.dropboxusercontent.com\/u\/1987387\/Even_more_on_using_the_RTL2832U_Dongle.pdf\"><strong>https:\/\/dl.dropboxusercontent.com\/u\/1987387\/Even_more_on_using_the_RTL2832U_Dongle.pdf<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p> Our book: &#8220;SolderSmoke &#8212; Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm\">http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke\">http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20\">http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With SPRAT 162 by my side, armed with an FT37-43 trifilar wound transformer, I popped open the RTL-SDR dongle. I had hopes of being able to solder two tiny wires to the unused input pins (3 and 4) but I quickly realized that I was NOT going to be able to do that &#8212; they &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/04\/27\/sdr-dongle-modified-for-hf-watch-it-work-on-40-meters-video\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;SDR Dongle Modified for HF.  Watch it work on 40 meters (VIDEO)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,17,119,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sdr","category-sprat","category-uk","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions\/532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}