This was a short SOTA outing on 2.3GHz in the somewhat vain hope (given the conditions) of contacts to the north. However I was hopeful that I would get at least one contact – which is what happened.
The 2.3GHz station on Bengray summit
The first Summits on the Air outing for a while – a post by Barry GM4TOE in the gm13 group had made me decide to do a little local hill, so I went up Scald Law which is a good walk on a nice day.
Scald Law summit trig point
Woooo – techie stuff! Receiving signals from the FUNcube1 educational / amateur radio satellite on a very cheap system – receiver cost £10, computer cost £35. (It’s an old monitor so that doesn’t count!) I will no doubt blog this stuff properly on my web pages in due course. Fun fun!
Marwyn could not stop giggling when I was loaded up on Wednesday to walk up to my talk at Lothians Radio Society – maybe the photos explain why, I don’t know ….
This is the 70cm (435MHz) omnidirectional antenna for satellites I have just finished – called the “eggbeater” for obvious reasons. It also appears to work well – this afternoon I heard HO-68 telemetry, and FO-29 twice – once on a low pass to the north, then again on a much higher pass, during which I clearly heard Italian (IW3RGK) and German (DL5OCD) amateur stations calling through the satellite. This is very satisfactory for an omnidirectional antenna, especially as I find the receiver in the FT-817 radio is as deaf as a post on 70cm. I shall make a little preamplifier for it before I try any satellite contacts.
I’ve made a new omnidirectional satellite antenna for 2m – a turnstile. Set it up on the balcony this morning (ignore the washing line 😉 ) and heard three satellites on 2m – the International Space Station, FUNcube-1 and UKube-1. Also heard HO-68 as a weak signal on 70cm. The next step is to make a 70cm omni antenna so I can hear the UHF signals better, and transmit through the FUNcube satellites.
For my satellite tracking buddies – I’ve just come across Gpredict http://gpredict.oz9aec.net/index.php which is something I’ve been looking for – Linux software that will drive an antenna mount to track the satellite. It looks very good indeed. Apparently there’s a Windoze version too …
