Tag Archives: Ham Radio

Sep 4 2011

World Amateur Radio Day – Celebrating 50 Years in Space

In light of the anniversary of the launch of OSCAR 1 on December 12, 1961 and the launch of OSCAR 2 on June 2, 1962, the IARU Administrative Council selected the phrase, “Amateur Radio Satellites: Celebrating 50 Years in Space” as the theme for World Amateur Radio Day, April 18, 2012

World Amateur Radio Day celebrates the founding on April 18, 1925 of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) and hams around the world will be on the air. The 2011 event attracted the interest of TV news broadcasters: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/april2011/amateur_rady_day_on_tv.htm

Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=189990007710376

Notes of the IARU Region 1 C5 committee meeting that took place in Sun City August 14-16, 2011 have been published in the VHF-UHF-MW newsletter Editon 58 that can be dowloaded at http://www.oevsv.at/export/oevsv/download/UKW/Newsletter_58.pdf

IARU Region 1 Minutes of the Final Plenary, August 17, 2011

IARU Administrative Council Summary Record August 19-20, 2011

Sep 3 2011

OSCAR-11 Report September 1, 2011

OSCAR-11 Report
September 1, 2011

Clive Wallis G3CWV says excellent signals from OSCAR-11 have been reported from stations located around the world.

clive_wallis_g3cwv

clive_wallis_g3cwv

This report covers the period from 27 April to 01 September 2011.
The satellite has continued to operate in a very predictable way since the last report, and no changes have been observed.

During this time the satellite has been heard reliably during its ten-day transmission periods. Excellent signals have been reported from stations located around the world, and good copy obtained from decoded telemetry frames.

Continue reading →

Aug 19 2011

Weather Sat Picture Received With FUNcube Dongle

Herbert DL4SDR used an AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle VHF/UHF software defined radio

NOAA 15 Received With FUNcube Dongle

to receive a weather satellite picture in the 136-138 MHz band. On the FUNcube Yahoo Group he writes:

Today [August 19]  I received  a picture  from NOAA 15  WX  satellite with  simple “stuff” FUNcube Dongle (FCD)  and a VHF/UHF Ground Plane Antenna  up 12 meters above  ground , 200 meters  above  sea level, 15 meter  coax cable WITHOUT  pre-amplifier !

Hardware:  FCDpro  with newest Firmware V18.i with PC  WinXP with onboard Graphics-Chip

Software: FCD-DF,  Doppler-DF,  SpectraVue, wxtoimage

Nice to  see what’s possible  with simple “stuff”  :))

Regards from Germany

Herbert DL4SDR

In a follow up email he said he had also used a Ground Plane Antenna in the attic as well as one outside to receive the picture. He says he was surprised to get this good  quality.

The FUNcube Dongle was developed as part of the educational outreach for AMSAT-UK FUNcube satellite project. Although it was designed  to enable school students to receive the satellite beacon the wide frequency coverage of 64 – 1700MHz has meant that it can be used for many other applications.

The AMSAT-UK FUNcude Dongle SDR is sold by Martin Lynch & Sons (ML&S) at
http://tinyurl.com/MartinLynchFCD

FUNcube Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube

Aug 17 2011

AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium Videos

Thanks to the hard work of volunteers from the British Amateur Television Club (BATC) 14 videos of the presentations given to the AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium held in Guildford during July 30-31, 2011 are now available online.

The Chair of BATC Trevor Brown G8CJS edited over 16 hours of video to produce the final versions.

You can watch the videos online at http://www.batc.tv/
Click on the ‘Film Archive’ icon
Select ‘AMSAT 2011’ from the Category drop down menu
Click ‘Select Category’
Select the video you wish to watch
Click on ‘Select Stream’
Click the play icon ‘>’ on the player
Clicking on the icon to the left of the player volume control will give you full screen display.

You can also download a video file to your PC by clicking on the ‘Click Here’ link under the player.

Some of the PowerPoint slides are also available Here

AMSAT-UK publishes a colour A4 newsletter, OSCAR News, that is full of Amateur Satellite information. The Spring OSCAR News can be seen athttp://www.uk.amsat.org/on_193_final.pdf
Join AMSAT-UK online at http://tinyurl.com/JoinAMSAT-UK/

 

Aug 12 2011

ARISSat-1 BPSK Reception Challenge

ARISSat-1 was deployed from the ISS on August 3. It has a composite VHF downlink that will easily fit into the FUNcube Dongle (FCD) receive spectrum. The 145.920 MHz telemetry is 1000 bps BPSK and can, of course, also be received with a normal SSB 2 metre receiver.

The signal levels from ARISSat-1 should be similar to those we expect from the AMSAT-UK FUNcube-1 satellite (and also eventually  from UKube-1) and the AMSAT-UK team are keen to discover what will be the minimum and best type of antennas for schools to use with a FUNcube Dongle (FCD) Software Defined Radio (SDR). Therefore user experience with the ARISSat-1 signals will be very valuable in making this determination.

To encourage everyone to receive the 145.920 MHz BPSK ARISSat-1 telemetry signal AMSAT-UK are offering a FUN reward for listeners!

Continue reading →

Aug 11 2011

FUNcube Dongle as a Radio Telescope?

A Radio Astronomy paper describes the use of the AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle Software Defined Radio as part of a Radio Telescope.

In the paper Dr David Morgan of the British Astronomical Association Radio Astronomy Group (BAA-RAG) describes how he used the FUNcube Dongle as the heart of a Radio Telescope operating on 1420 MHz.

He concludes that “A newly available SDR component has been shown to be very capable of acting as the heart of a simple and inexpensive three component radio telescope.”.

You can download the paper ‘Experiments with a Software Defined Radio Telescope’ by Dr David Morgan at
http://www.britastro.org/radio/projects/
An_SDR_Radio_Telescope.pdf

General Radio Astronomy Projects
http://www.britastro.org/radio/projects/otherproj.html

BAA-RAG Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baa-rag/

AMSAT-UK FUNcube Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube/