Sunday, 11th June, 2023

Just sat and listened to several people in a net today on 40m. They were calling CQ and then everyone was doing a signal report with the new person. I did call but they didn’t pick me out. It also took about 10 minutes per person to go round everyone, so after 3 people I gave up. Did hear Callum from DX Commander, who has a YouTube channel as well.

I have also been researching satellite setup, specifically for the QO-100 geostationary satellite. Trying to decide if I want to go all SDR or whether to have a transreceiver and upconverter for transmit. Full SDR makes it all on the computer (and in theory anywhere I have internet access) but transceiver means I could make use of it for other stuff - either regular satellites or local VHF/UHF. I don’t own a VHF/UHF base station so I’d have to get one, which is probably more expensive than the SDR I’m looking at. The SDR is basically a computer running linux with some hardware attached, so it’s like having a computer at the dish.

I was trying to figure out where the dish would go on the house, I think it could go on the side, which would be nice as then out of the way and not too obvious. I was using the official website to locate the satellite and it looked like it would be fine. I then used my phone and various apps to do AR to locate it in situ. Weirdly, my phone was saying it was nearly 90 degrees away. I then found my phone would give different directions on the compass each time I opened the app. Not sure what that’s about.

So I think I should be fine, but probably need to test it with the dish before mounting it.

I worry that the QO-100 is quite involved and I end up spending a fair amount of money on it, for what is essentially one link - although covering a huge area of the globe. Also that the fun is in the building not the using….like making a new static blog website…

Which, btw, I’m only 2 months away from having this site for 2 years!

Perhaps I should just do orbiting birds with my handheld FM…