How can I feed multiple channels?

[banchong]

I am on the board of directors for a flying club, and we took over a clubhouse that had a large roof mounted antenna with associated wiring. I bought a cheap Uniden scanner radio to hook up to the radio so we could have the CTAF broadcast inside the clubhouse.

I'm interested in feeding the CTAF, AWOS and any other channels I can get using the large, roof mounted antenna but have limited experience. I'm willing to spend a bit of money to get it set up, including a small 24/7 computer to feed to LiveATC. I did a quick search in here but am a little confused on what I need to get this started?

To be clear, I don't want it scanning channels ... I'd like to have separate, dedicated channels fed to LiveATC. I read I can simply use an SDR?

Can someone explain how I can get this going?

[dave]

You can absolutely use an SDR. But whether a single SDR can do what you want depends on the exact frequencies. What airport is it and what are the frequencies of interest?

[banchong]

Thanks Dave. To begin, I'd like to do the CTAF and AWOS ... airport is KBVU. I haven't tested what other local frequencies I can receive using the roof-mounted antenna, just yet ... I know KLAS is totally covered, so perhaps a few of the local LA Center frequencies, but again, not sure what I can receive just yet.

What would be the best setup for the AWOS and CTAF?

[dave]

For this I would recommend a HydraSDR or AirSpy R2 and a Raspberry Pi 4B. That is, assuming you are on airport. Don't use RTL-SDR style dongles on-airport. You can, but you will have to set the gain at a fixed value (and low) to avoid signal overload.That will reduce your signal reception range. And you would need 2 of those RTL dongles to cover those two frequencies, since they are not close enough to feed from a single RTL SDR.

Hope this helps. When you are getting closer to install open a ticket with us and we can guide you through the process of setting things up.

Dave

[banchong]

Got it, thanks. I did a bit of quick searching, didn't realize the price jumps up quite a bit for those models. I'll have to run it by the others in the club to see if they would approve to spend that much.

In the meantime, if we went back to just 1 frequency stream, the CTAF, what would be the best setup? For reference, the scanner we have on site is a Uniden BC365CRS. Not sure if thats of use at all, or if a direct connection to a SDR is the best option. And yes we're on site at the airport so quality of signal is great.