Everything with this USB stick seems fine except the connector for the antenna. Upon connecting the antenna to the stick, it did not click in or have some sort of positive stop. I messed around with it just fine, then the reception started getting worse. I pulled the antenna off the connector and the reason for the bad reception was immediately obvious: the antenna pulled the outer connector off with it!! I don't even know how a manufacturing defect like this can happen, it does not seem to be broken off or soldered incorrectly, maybe crimped incorrectly? I've already ordered a replacement of the model, the mini 2+, and upon it's receipt it does have a very nice click when the antenna connector is inserted. I can only surmise I got a lemon with this model.

I'm using this on linux with GQRX. The antenna that comes with it is useless. I bought Centerfire Anthenna Discone and ElementDigital F-Femalt to MCX male adapter and connected NESDR to the discone using coaxial cable (all available in Amazon, discone needs an F-Adapter if you are going to use coaxical cable ). My antenna is currently located about 8 feet above from the ground, and has several obstacles around it. Even with such limitations, so far I looked at nearby airplanes using dump1090 and listened CB, commercial radio and air band using GQRX.

I was hoping to watch some over-the-air digital tv, but I discovered that this device is a modified DVB-T dongle and not compatible with ATSC used in USA.

For a novice, I think this is a very good device to get familiar with SDRs and radio concepts in general.

My very first foray into SDR, and it's so much fun! Admittedly, half the fun was just getting it configured- the instructions on NooElec's website should be considered a rough guide, at best. Not much of what I experienced while installing under Win7 went the way they described. But...

I started with HDSDR, and quickly got the hang of recognizing signals including all the local commercial FM stations, and, quite comically, my elderly neighbour's wireless headphones, operating at 926 MHz. After that, I decided to tackle monitoring and decoding our local emergency services digital trunk radio system. I have to say that this little SDR seems perfectly suited to this particular application, and even with the supplied antenna provides very decent service- even when the entire radio system has been deemed a failure since its inception some 16 years ago.

I began with a solid understanding of radio and a working knowledge of what a SDR is, and within six hours of receiving this little guy was eavesdropping on the local constabulary. Everything you could possibly need to know in order to operate this device can be found on the internet, and there is plenty of freeware to keep one occupied for ages.

An awesome introduction to SDRs. Highly recommended. Now to get it working under Ubuntu.

I bought this for tracking live airline flights at flightaware.com. Once I received the device, plugged it into my RaspberryPi, and installed flightaware's OS I was tracking flights in no time. I put the unit close to a windows and was only seeing perhaps 110 degrees of sky and for maybe 30 miles using the supplied antenna. I haven't tried the remote because well who is really using this thing for a media device, oh you are, uhhhh okay I heard you can do that too but did you also know that you can use this to pick up all sorts of communications using it as a software defined radio. The one real let down was the antenna, but come on look at it, honestly I was surprised I saw what I did. Needless to say I switched out the antenna with a slightly better one and was able to see a lot more sky. If you are able to mount it to a roof then the supplied antenna will work a lot better but I don't think you will be able to get the over 200 miles you can with a "recommended" antenna.

The best yet from NooElec. this usb SDR is more sensitive than previous units, i have 3. One of the apps i run is absdSCOPE VER 2.7. It is a plane tracker at 1090 mhz. i can now track planes 100 miles to the north and at least 80 miles in all the rest of the directions. I see data packets at over 3500+ frames per minute. The guys using the tracker will understand the boost i got from the new sdr receiver. It runs very cool for hours at a time. I also checked the CPU usage, it stays around 6%. Not bad for all that decoding and running multiple programs.

UPDATE: Just saw 4416 frames per second on AdsdScope see attached photo
UPDATE: Just saw 5382 frames per second on AdsdScope see attached photo