Decoding Pager Traffic with PDW and SDR#

Today I uploaded a video on youtube showing how to decode pager traffic using sdr#, pdw and virtual audio cable. Pager sniffing is the hacker term. I am able to detect about 20 unique transmissions in total which are mostly POCSAG and Flex-A (1600 and 3200 baud). Most of the traffic is found around 152-155Mhz and 135-138Mhz, though I pick up a few faint signals between 454-460Mhz.

Software used:
SDR# - Used to detect signals with USB DVB-T dongle
PDW - Radio signal decoder
Virtual Audio Cable - Used like an audio mixer to send sdr audio output to pdw sound input

Hardware used:
Genius TVGo - rtl2832 dongle with fc0012 tuner
Wire Antenna - 2m of copper wire from a lan cable

Analysis of the traffic makes it obvious that some channels are being shared by multiple services, probably linked nationwide. Most of it is sent in plain text though the odd channel or transmission (and one notably strong one) is encrypted and appears as garbage in pdw. Some just spit out page tests all day long. Services include Fire, Ambulance and delivery companies. People also send SNMP data over the pager network, with messages such as ping failures, server failures and device offline notifications.

 Shout out to superphish on youtube, I did notice the signals but had no idea what they were. Found out it was pager traffic after watching one of his videos.