Rod,
Here are some general suggestions for any station setting up for observing HEO's:
At 12:06 PM 2/14/2007, Stargate wrote:
Hi all, Well, It's time to start considering antennas for my satellite station. (tax refund:-) I am trying to pack as many modes into my station as I can. I have the following so far....
Yaesu FT-847 AOR 8600 MK2 receiver (dc-3ghz) Icom IC-706MK2G Mirage 2530 (300 watt 2 meter amplifier) Astron RS-70M power supply G-5500 rotor LVB tracking board SAT688 tracking board Orbitron tracking software Andrew CF2P coax (2.7db loss 100' @ 450mhz)
I will be running the coax in about 50-70' runs from the shack to theantennas.
Chose coax to keep your losses below 1-dB. You might consider running 1/2-inch hardline for transmit.
I would like to have mode S receive as well but the loss gets rather high with this coax so hardline or a mast mounted downconverter may be the way I go.
Mode-S requires a low noise front-end (usually a good preamp, immediately followed by the downconverter. The preamp should be mounted on the dish feed or no more than 2-feet of coax from the feed. Place the downconverter at the dish so that you may run light-duty coax back into the shack (I ran 60-foot of RG-58). Placing the preamp/converter with long coax runs after the dish feed will result in failure. Do not do that. I can only guess on what size dish is needed for P3E or Eagle, but probably a 3-foot will do fine (that was the min size that worked well on AO-40). Do not think of using a helical beam...nearly all who tried them on AO-40 were dissatisfied.
A trick to avoiding big low-loss coax is to locate your Tx amplifiers at the antenna. This will require a wx-tight box and probably a 12-volt power supply co-located with the amp(s). The only frequency that one can get away with ordinary coax is 144-MHz. 432 and 1268 need low-loss cable. Above 1.2 GHz one should mount equipment at the antenna.
I'm pretty sure I want circular polarized antennas unlesssomeone talks me out of it. Switchable for LHCP or RHCP??
Switchable is great but many of us have gotten along fine with RHCP. Others have used linear-pol and if the antennas are large enough that works fine. ON receive one will get spin modulation fading more pronounced using linear antennas.
Whatever VHF and UHF antennas I choose will also be used for terrestrial work as well. Unfortunately, my terrestrial work is somewhat limited due to the topography of where my house is. I will also be adding mast mounted preamps sometime in the future.
For terrestrial linear-pol is probably indicated so that might make your decision. I ran RHCP on 432 terrestrially with no issues (realizing that half my signal was wasted in cross-pol).
I'm confusing myself with all the modes and options so what do yourecommend?
I'm sure others will make some suggestions so that may help (or not). Although getting ready now has your station able to go with the launch of the new satellites, we do not know for sure how well they will perform until they are up there. So some may want to wait and see.
I have all my antennas from AO-40 so no reason for me to wait. If I were purchasing everything, I might hold off on some items until more is known on satellite requirements (did the mode-whatever survive, etc.).
73, Ed - KL7UW ====================================== BP40IQ 50-MHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com 144-EME: FT-847, mgf-1801, 4x-xpol-20, 185w DUBUS Magazine USA Rep [email protected] ======================================