Amateur radio, space, technology and other geeky stuff by Alexandru Csete
This is the last satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is the good old Fuji FO-29 and the recording was made in JO45KG during orbit 71777.
Continue reading “FO-29 satellite reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the seventh satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is HO-68 / XW-1 and the recording was made in JO45KG during orbit 5791.
Continue reading “HO-68 CW beacon with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the sixth satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is the Japanese PRISM cubesat an the recording was made in JO45KG during orbit 11343.
Continue reading “PRISM cubesat reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the fifth satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is the CUTE-1.7 + APD II cubesat – also known as CO-65 – and the recording was made in JO45KG during orbit 15341.
Continue reading “CUTE-1.7 + APD II reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the fourth satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is the KKS-1 cubesat an the recording was made in JO45KG during orbit 11263.
Continue reading “KKS-1 cubesat reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the third satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is the ITUpSAT-1 cubesat transmitting with 100 mW FM CW and the recording was done in JO45KG during orbit 7593.
Continue reading “ITUpSAT1 cubesat reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the second satellite reception in a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The spacecraft is the SwissCube satellite with 100 mW CW beacon and 1 W FSK tranmitter (second half of the video). The recording was done on JO45KG during orbit 7594.
Continue reading “SwissCube reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
This is the first satellite reception of a series recorded on Monday, February 28, 2011 using the Funcube Dongle software defined radio receiver and the Arrow II hand-held satellite antenna. The satellite is SEEDS-II / CO-66 cubesat with a 90 mW CW beacon. The recording was done in JO45KG during orbit 15338.
Continue reading “SEEDS-II cubesat reception with Funcube Dongle and Arrow antenna”
I was playing with GNU Radio, the USRP and the WBX daughterboard tonight preparing for the tests of the 5.7/5.8 GHz receiver setup tomorrow. For some reason that I can not remember, I have decided to tune in to 432.471 MHz – the UHF frequency of the OZ7IGY beacon, which is located approximately 50 km (24 mi) from me.
I knew I could receive it even when I am inside using my FT-817 but I didn’t really expect to receive it with the USRP+WBX. Well, I was wrong. Already with the lousy multi-band whip I could hear it. It wasn’t strong but I could hear it. I decided to try with the Arrow antenna and voila, suddenly I could receive it with 40+ dB SNR!
Watch in high definition on YouTube or get the 80 MByte .mov file.
The software was a slightly modified version of the simple CW receiver I posted yesterday, implemented in GNU Radio Companion. The modification consisted of adding a waterfall display after the band pass filter. I have included the GNU Radio flow graph at the end of the video, the one below is without the waterfall display:
So, what do you think, how does the CW sound in a so simple software defined radio?