Hi Keith, By way of sharing my personal experience -
(a) A controlled approach (aka smaller sticker shock) would be to establish the Azimuth rotor and use a fixed 30deg Elevation. It works for 90% of the passes. (b) But the main challenge in going from a handheld ops to a motorized rotator has one (usually missed) issue - you can no longer twist the antenna for phase angle compensation. (c) Also, a circularly polarized antenna (usually) requires a switch to change between RHCP and LHCP, for a complete setup. I too found the Arduino based approach most flexible and cost effective. You can review it here - https://sites.google.com/site/k6vugdiary/home/satellite-tracking-system I have since, following my own advice, modified it to control an old azimuth rotor. Take your time... Best, Umesh k6vug
On Wednesday, August 1, 2018, 10:48:44 AM PDT, Keith E. Brandt, WD9GET wd9get@amsat.org wrote:
I've been using the sats with my Arrow and HT and am considering the jump to a more robust station. I'm pretty well set with my TS-2000 and I can figure out antennas, but the interwebs are a major tangle of articles about tracking systems, and I'm having problems sorting out the info overload.
I'm in south Texas and planning a permanent installation, so weather hardiness is necessary. This seems to me to rule out SatNOGs and Portable Rotation systems. The main alternative I'm seeing is the Yaesu G-5500 (Alfa Spid is more than I'm wanting to spend). Where things get really murky is the computer interface. The GS232A is a bit on the expensive side. There are many alternatives, but many are no longer in production or are technically outdated.
What I'm looking for from the group is recommendations for Az-El rotor systems and computer interfaces (I'm using SATPC32 and HRD for the tracking software).
Thanks & 73, Keith WD9GET