sdr, week 32: a bench baseline, taken before the antenna

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Small week here, but it’s the start of something I want to do properly.

The receiver got measured with no antenna attached. This sounds like a non-experiment and it’s the opposite: it’s the only way to get a baseline. Once an antenna is on there, every subsequent number is the radio and the antenna and the environment, and there is no way to separate them retroactively. So: characterise the bare device first, with tooling that can re-run the same measurements and verify them rather than a one-off session and a screenshot.

That verification tooling is the actual deliverable. A number I can’t reproduce next month isn’t a measurement, it’s an anecdote.

Also written up this week: the satellite and drone reception projects, as a plan rather than a result. Nothing received yet.

The write-up of the bench characterisation is going to be this blog’s first real article, rather than a logbook line — there are numbers and a method and it deserves more than a paragraph.

Where this came from

Three commits in the sdr repository, 5–6 August 2026: the initial no-antenna bench characterisation with its verification tooling, and the satellite/drone project write-up. The repository is private.

The no-antenna measurements were run. The satellite and drone work is described as planned, because nothing has been received yet.

rtl-sdr — toothywalrus

sdr, week 32: a bench baseline, taken before the antenna

Where this came from