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rtlsdr-airband

Multi-channel AM/NFM voice receiver with streaming output

What it does

Receives many narrowband voice channels at once from a single SDR and outputs them as audio: to a local sound device, to files, or to an Icecast server. Built for air-band AM monitoring, where a dozen tower, ground and approach frequencies sit within one dongle's bandwidth, but it handles NFM equally well.

Why you would want it

Nothing else in the catalog turns one dongle into a multi-channel scanner with no moving parts and no scanning delay — every channel is demodulated continuously, so nothing is missed while the receiver is elsewhere. The Icecast output is what makes a feed shareable, which is how most public air-band streams are produced.

Before it will work

An SDR and an antenna for the band of interest. A configuration file is required and is the real work: channels, gains, squelch and outputs are all declared there. Streaming to Icecast needs a server and credentials, which are yours to supply and are deliberately never written into the catalog.

How it installs

  • git (cmake) — https://github.com/rtl-airband/RTLSDR-Airband at v5.3.1
  • build dependencies: build-essential, cmake, pkg-config, librtlsdr-dev, libsoapysdr-dev, libairspy-dev, libmp3lame-dev, libshout3-dev, libconfig-dev, libfftw3-dev, libusb-1.0-0-dev, libpulse-dev
  • Upstream's container build compiles rtl-sdr-blog from source for RTL-SDR V4 support rather than using the distribution's librtlsdr. We take the distribution package instead; if a V4 dongle is the target, see the rtl_sdr_v4 disposition, which is a separate decision from this build.

Binaries this produces:

  • rtl_airband

Known problems

CPU use scales with the number of channels and the sample rate; on a Pi this is the limiting factor rather than the radio. Upstream builds against rtl-sdr-blog rather than the distribution's librtlsdr in order to support RTL-SDR V4 dongles — with the distribution library a V4 may not tune correctly.

Keeping it current

  • probe: github tags
  • strategy: rebuild
  • Tagged releases, actively developed. Last commit on the default branch 2026-08-23 (verified 2026-08-28 from the branch head — D-032). Skywave ships 4.0.2, well behind.

Where to get help with the software itself

GitHub issues and the project wiki at https://github.com/rtl-airband/RTLSDR-Airband. Note that the older szpajder/ and charlie-foxtrot/ URLs redirect here; issues belong on this one.

Source: catalog/packages/rtlsdr-airband.yaml