Luckily, the tuners were cheap enough that you could buy a couple and experiment. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon to find RTL-SDR compatible devices for less than $10 from import sites.
Blogger [radioforeveryone] set out to look at 19 different RTL-SDR dongles for use in receiving ... For instance, you can buy an $8 dongle and build a coketenna and have less than $10 tied up.