Graham Shirville said:
> As part of the FUNcube mission team, I can absolutely confirm that it is
> possible to receive and decode telemetry signals from EO88/Nayif-1 with
> an omni antenna. Presently AO-73/FUNcube-1 is running only low power
> telemetry around 30 mW) so is more difficult.
As I said, this was APRS on NO-44 about 20 years ago.
> With Nayif you should see upwards of 90 packets received on each good
> near-overhead pass. The FUNcube system was specifically designed for the
> telemetry to be easily received at schools and colleges using only
> simple equipment.
I have made no attempt to do anything with satellites since about 2005 (house issues). Hope to be back within the next year.
> The antennas that we use are generally turnstiles. AMSAT-UK used to hold
> these in stock but, sadly, supply difficulties have made that impossible
> for the time being.
I tried several antennas including turnstiles, quadrafiller, and simple 1/4 wave verticals.
> The possible problems that you may have could be:
> Locally high levels of wide band noise...often the case in urban areas
Very likely. I am in the Los Angeles basin, so RF noise levels are high.
> A receiver/SDR dongle that does not have sufficient filtering to
> reject out of band cross modulation etc (The FUNcube Dongle is very good
> in this respect)
I was using a Midland commercial 2-way radio both with and without a SSB pre-amp at the antenna.
This was years before anyone had SDR receivers.
> Excessive signal loss in the coax - a filtered preamp will solve this.
All of 25 feet of LMR-400 at 2 meters
> A poor antenna!
Reportedly some of the best non-directional satellites antennas at the time. When I used my AO-10 class antennas, it worked great.
73
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Jim Walls - K6CCC
jim(a)k6ccc.org