Back with the Sats: Catching Cubes with a Dongle

I've been playing around with a little $13 DVB-T SDR Dongle receiver.  These devices normally tune 24 MHz to 1.7 GHz, but I modified the first one I had so that it would tune the HF bands.   Pete then sent me another one, which I vowed to keep unmodified, thinking that it would be fun to use it to listen to the many small Cube-Sats that are up there.  Most have downlinks (and Morse Code beacons) in the 470 MHz range.   I whipped together a simple ground-plane antenna for this band (One 6 inch copper wire as the receive element with 4 five inch groundplane elements). 

 

I then went to the "Heavens Above" website, plugged in my location, and clicked on "Amateur satellites."  This gave me a very accurate schedule of satellite passes.  I started listening. 





First I heard (and saw in the HDSDR waterfall)  the CW beacon of the Prism satellite at 7:05 am EDT today.  Prism is from the University of Tokyo and was launched from Japan.

Then Cubesat XI-V at 0711 EDT.

Cubesat XI-IV was heard at 0813 EDT.  The Cubesats are from Japan and were launched from Russia.  

ITUsPAT was heard at 1422 EDT.  The I is for "Istanbul"

Finally,  I monitored a pass of the Japanese FO-29 satellite aka JAS-2 at 1611.  Wow, this was like old times on the RS-10 and RS-12 satellites.   Lots of CW and SSB stations in the downlink passband.   Lots of fun.

At 470 MHz the Doppler shift of a low-earth orbit satellite is quite noticeable, and helps confirm that you are in fact receiving sigs from an orbiting device.

I thought it was pretty cool to take a $13 DVB-T Dongle, connect it to a small, copper-wire antenna, and use it all to receive signals from some 4"x4"x4" cubes in orbit of the Earth.

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Pete Puts His Zia in a Box

 

Wow, Pete really knows how to pack a lot electronics into a small box.  (He claims that he does this to justify the $250000 CNC machine!) I remain very jealous of that cool display panel. 

  

 

  

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Why "Q" for Transistors?

Steve Silverman provides a possible answer:

"There are claims that, after initial chaos, eventually the letter Q was chosen because of the popular TO18/TO39 case styles."

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Another Great Rig (and Video) from Peter Parker VK3YE

Peter Parker has a double dose of The Knack:  Not only is he a great rig builder, but he is also a very skilled teacher.  His videos provide really excellent descriptions of how he selects, designs, and modifies the stages that make up his magnificent rigs.  You can learn a lot from these videos.  Thanks Peter.  

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Why are relays marked "K" on schematics?

Our official SolderSmoke etymologist and lexicographer Steve Silverman explains:

Bill

    Here is some ham radio/electronics trivia

    In the days when amateur radio used short range spark transmitters, multi-station relays were used to move a message across longer distances.  At the end of each transmission, a "K" was sent, which told the receiving operator to commence his relay to the next station. Hence the use of 'K" to designate a relay in a schematic diagram, and "end-of-transmission" for CW operators.  And hence the American Radio RELAY League

73Steve Silverman

KB3SII  ... .. ..

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Progress on Pete's "ZIA"

It is practically SPARKLING!   Beautiful job Pete.  I'm glad you are actually boxing this one up! 

Pete has many more pictures of this project here: 
http://www.n6qw.com/TIA.html

He also notes that there may have been some sub-conscious Knack wisdom at work when I dubbed his rig "The Zia."   I was thinking strictly in terms of language and ethnic heritage:  TIA stands for Termination Insensitive Amplifier.  But in Spanish it means "aunt".  But in Italian Aunt comes out as Zia.  So Pete's should be a Zia, right?  Capisce?

Well Pete puts an electronic twist on it:

"Once again you are spot on with ZIA (With  Z the electronic symbol for Impedance).  Thus Impedance (The symbol Z) Insensitive Amp. Thank You."

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20% off Sale on "SolderSmoke" and "Us and Them" Books at Lulu

20% off on all print books at Lulu through June 18:

 

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/soldersmoke  

 

Use coupon code SPLURGE

 

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20