Hi George,
Yes, the FUNcube dongle makes a great sat receiver with many of the programs that are out there. There is little problem getting the FCD to work as a great sat receiver. The emphasis in most SDR programs that I have tried is <Receiving> (that is not a big surprise). Support for transmit offset for linear sats and transmit doppler correction are the missing pieces in everything I have looked at.
Rather that re-invent the wheel it seems to make sense to build off the strength of existing programs like SatPC32 and have the SDR and your transmitter sit out there under CAT control of SatPC32 or a similar program.
I have had the best luck with spur and image reduction with SDR-Radio (there is an automatic mode which is great for an old geezer like me). It does have a ton of useless 'feature bloat' items like a calendar and picture viewer but it does support network based SDR's and is suppose to tie in with HRD.
If people are already using SatPC32 or something similar it would be a relatively painless upgrade path to the FUNcube dongle if they could build on what they know and use rather than starting over. The FCD or similar device might be a low cost upgrade path to full duplex operation.
The future of the hobby is FM sats so this is all probably irrelevant but it is still fun and interesting.
tnx & 73 W9KE Tom
On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 2:51 PM, George Henry ka3hsw@att.net wrote:
Take a look at SatControl_FCD. I haven't tried it with SDR-Radio, but with WR-Plus and the Ext_IO DLL, it makes the FunCube Dongle into a very nice satellite receiver.
George, KA3HSW
----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Doyle tomdoyle1948@gmail.com To: AMSAT-BB@amsat.org Sent: Mon, August 27, 2012 1:46:15 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] FUNcube + SatPC32 + SDR-Radio
The FUNcube and SDR-Radio work great together. Transmit control for satellite use in SDR-Radio is very limited (non-existent from what I have been able to find). I would like the FUNcube / SDR-Radio combination to act like a simple receiver under cat control from SatPC32 or similar program. I would like to talk with anyone who has actual experience with this.
tnx & 73 W9KE