Eshail-2 thats QO-100

 Well,

Soon after the launch of the QO-100 satellite I managed to bodge together a station - which has long since been discarded.

I've decied to have another go and see what activity is on this geostationary bird.

I've chucked a few bits together to get a narowband RX going, it looks a bit like this - there's a 1 meter ofset dish attached to the back of one of my wifes trellises for roses in the garden:

I tried to use a SatFinder app on my Android phone for alignment, but it seemed to be unsure where south was, which didnt exactly inspire me. I had my best guess at it and then tweeked the allignment for max signal. The only thing that really had me fooled for a while was the angle of tilt - the satellite is at 24.4 degrees from my QTH, but I had no real idea what the ofset angle of the dish was. As it happens the dish itself is practically vertical so its actual ofset must be close to the target I need.

Here's a photo of the dish:

And these are some screenshots from SDR Console:

It has a really neat tracking feature so you can automatically adjust for LNB drift:

You just clock on the PSK beacon and it just does its thing.

I have no idea how well this is aligned as I dont know how strong the beacon should be. Anyone know?

The first QSO I listened to was from the NRC using GB3RS who were letting some scouts use the micrtophone to pass comments to a station in ON land. Most excellent!

ARISS and SSTV

Well,

Over Christmas and New Year, ARISS (Thats Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) have been transmiting some Slow Scan Television to commemerate the year 2024.

The transmissions are on 145.800 using mode PD120 and I left my copy of  RXSSTV running to see what I could capture.

I used the SatTrack part of Ham Radio Delux to track and calculate the upcoming passes of the ISS.

I captured quite a few images, none are perfect - but neither is my RX setup. I'm not tracking the ISS with the antennas, not are they pointing up!

I uploaded my images to the ARISS website and received a nice certificate:

Fun, don't you think?

I'm Back! Its a Portsdown 4

 Well,

After a long time doing other things, I'm back into the radio hobby after quite a spell away.

I have a new "shack" at the house, which is shared by quite a few of my aquatic chums (I keep fish), but its a good space and I'm enjoying it.

I'm slowley getting things back together....

I've just started construction of the BATC Portsdown 4, its a Raspberry Pi4 based DATV transciever.

Currently I have a Pi4, a 7" touchscreen, a Logitec WebCam and a LimeSDR mini (the last bit I found in the attic). So far so good.

The RX side is currently a new BATC project called the PicoTuner:

So called, because its based on a Raspberry Pi Pico. This receiver is running with some software called 

Open Tuner by ZR6TG. This PC based software will work with the Pico tuner and so far I have sent a Test Card from one end of the bench to the other using bits of wet noodle as antennas.

So, this feels like a good start.

I'd like to try and get some DATV on 146.5MHz and I have an amplifier for this purpose somewhere.... I will also install a dish to initially RX QO-100.

More to come!

TS-890 Audio Playback

 A very quick video showing how to play back on-air recordings:

Simple, don't you think?

Balun Output Impedance

 Well,

Lots of discussions about my baluns and the test setup, a common question seems to be how to measure the output impedance.

Here's my way:

Fun, dont you think?

Progress is slow and steady

 My little YouTube channel continues to progress slowly:

Good fun!

Its Funny What you can Find

 Well,

Can anyone offer a translation?

Thanks for the credit in the description :-)