In my quest to build out capabilities, I've been looking at semi-portable antenna setups.
I home brewed the "AMSAT" cheap satellite antennas, using foam and aluminum wire to actually get on the air with a couple of Baofeng HT's last year.
I eventually upgraded and setup my home station with an FT-736R, FT-817 and an Elk dual band log periodic antenna.
However, my brother W1GGM/7 just "bequeathed" (no, he has not passed on just yet... ) a
Yaesu G500A elevation rotor! One half of the AZ-EL equation for base operation!
Therefore, I'm going to be looking into some kind of antenna tripod, azimuth rotor and dual antenna (likely) arrangement and try to match this up with SatPC32!
Great, more projects :D
Monday, February 29, 2016
Sunday, February 14, 2016
A Happy Valentine's Day to South Jersey... from Space
Today's NOAA-19 19:10z pass over the east coast came out nice, showing the Grand State of South Jersey's severe-clear conditions right now.
It's cold at around 20F, light breeze, but it is SUNNY :)
It's cold at around 20F, light breeze, but it is SUNNY :)
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Beyond voice
So in this new world of Satellite operation, I've been slowly, ever so slowly, catching up on digital technology, software, satelllite telemetry, and working other modes.
For some reason, I still want to hit my thumb with a hammer, so I stay off the simple things and jump right into what, for me, is the most complicated of approaches.
Sure, a grade school girl can, with the help of her dad, work all the FM satellites that pass on the east coast, but I'd like try to understand the world of SDR, digital modes, rig control, and yes eventually satellite antenna control, all via a Nextbook 8" win10 tablet if possible.
So far, I was able to try two SDR receivers:
Both have their upsides.
The RTL-SDR/SDR# and WXtoIMG combo seems to consume fewer CPU cycles than the
SDRPlay/HDSDR/WXtoIMG combo for receiving satellite images. However, I seem to more consistently get decent images out of SDR# than HDSDR. Haven't quite figured that out yet.
A recent and decent image I received is from NOAA-19:
an earlier image that was a little less clear, from NOAA-18:
For some reason, I still want to hit my thumb with a hammer, so I stay off the simple things and jump right into what, for me, is the most complicated of approaches.
Sure, a grade school girl can, with the help of her dad, work all the FM satellites that pass on the east coast, but I'd like try to understand the world of SDR, digital modes, rig control, and yes eventually satellite antenna control, all via a Nextbook 8" win10 tablet if possible.
So far, I was able to try two SDR receivers:
- The RTL-SDR dongle and
- The SDRPlay SDR receiver
Both have their upsides.
The RTL-SDR/SDR# and WXtoIMG combo seems to consume fewer CPU cycles than the
SDRPlay/HDSDR/WXtoIMG combo for receiving satellite images. However, I seem to more consistently get decent images out of SDR# than HDSDR. Haven't quite figured that out yet.
A recent and decent image I received is from NOAA-19:
an earlier image that was a little less clear, from NOAA-18:
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