Tom,
Glad to see someone joining us portable & Grid Expeditioner folks. It's a blast!
My advice after several years of Gridding from 60+ locations across US & Canada is to start out simple. Put together something that works easily and successfully to begin with and make improvements one-at-a-time from there. Having too many complicated things when just starting out can be very frustrating.
You can see my setup on my QRZ.com page. It is very simple. - Dual-band XCVR (no need for duplexer) - Arrow antenna (Tripod added since pic was taken) - 10 ft runs of RG8X (tie-wrapped together) - No preamps, no chokes
With this setup I work stations right down to LOS.
Good Luck and never hesitate to ask this group whatever question comes to mind - people here will fall over themselves to offer great advice at all times!
73/GL, Bob K8BL/5 (Lumberton, TX)
________________________________ From: "tom.wz9u@gmail.com" tom.wz9u@gmail.com To: "amsat-bb@amsat.org" amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 2:06 AM Subject: [amsat-bb] Advice for a portable ground station
The lack of a fully searchable archive for this list has made this post necessary, my apologies for a noob-style query.
I’m gradually assembling a portable ground station for the FM satellites, primarily using John Heath’s (G7HIA) article “Down-to-Earth Satellite Communications” (PDF), focusing on his “Awesome” configuration:
Dual-band HT
Diplexer
2m amplifier
70cm preamplifier
Arrow II antenna
In that article he uses RG58 coax, perhaps 15-20 feet max. Is there a better choice that also works in that application? Considering the lengths involved, price per foot is not really an issue.
He also calls out an RF choke at the feed point of the 70cm antenna, but gives no detail about its material or construction. It looks to me like a few turns of RG58 on some type of ferrite core. I’ve spent hours Googling for information (commercial or DIY) and have come up mostly empty-handed. All the “meaty” stuff is for HF only.
A final question concerns the various connectors involved. The illustrations in that article aren’t the best, but it seems that he’s using BNC terminators on all the cables, and BNC-to-UHF adapters where required. I’m concerned (perhaps too much) about cumulative losses, both from the coax and all those adapters.
My goal is a tripod-mounted antenna, operating on battery power from various parks and forest preserves nearby.
Can anyone clarify my understanding here?
Tom WZ9U
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