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You only need to remove the internal TCXO. No other modification is needed. However, be sure to feed it a sine wave. It does not lock correctly to a square wave source.

It isn't visibly obvious in the video, but the boresight tube is aligned parallel to the radiation axis of the dish. This is done by peaking the dish on sun noise and then adjusting the angle of the boresight tube left/right and up/down until the tube casts a symmetrical shadow. Once that is done... if the dish is peaked on signals from the moon, the moon appears centered in the tube when you sight through it.

@@n1bug Doesn't sound right to me. You would still NOT be looking at the sun. The shadow would be minimal when the tube is aligned - agreed. But you are using the boom of the dish to align with. That boom is not placed symetrical with the center of the dish but rather offset by NNN degrees. I agree that the LNB would be aligned but not the dish. The dish reflects signals at an offset angle. Simply pointing the LNB arm to the source does not produce a proper alignment. Try it. Align the LNB to Jupiter and then try to listen to the Jovian whistles; you'll get nothing!. Its more likely that the incoming signal has a significantly wider beam width than the offset of the dish. In this case "near enough is good enough". Own a 3D printer? There are many solar alignment tools available on Thingiverse for you to print - many for satellite dished. Make one and see what you get.

Hi Alberto. I am glad you found this video helpful. I suppose there are a few different ways to do it, but this method works for me. Good luck with your project!

As far as I can tell, I get no HF, VHF or UHF noise from the Davis. The console is some distance from any of those antennas. The Davis sensor suite is quite close to the 50, 144, 222, and 432 MHz antennas but I don't think I am getting noise from it. I should probably run some additional tests to confirm it is not bothering any bands...

@@n1bug In my case the noise was radiating from the usb connection to the datalogger. Broadband ~S7 noise in 50 meters distance from the antenna.

@@antoineroquentin2297 Interesting. I don't use the datalogger or USB. I have a meteobridge nano SD installed inside the Davis console. It connects wirelessly to my network. It is a nice solution, but quite expensive.

I think they removed your previous comment before sending a notification. I did get notified of this one so let's hope it stays. I will be curious what you might find with alternate settings. I know of at least one 10 GHz beacon that is on the air that way, probably with spurs. I don't think the spurs bother most people, but my project goal was to create the cleanest beacon possible given budget. I am now using the new LBE-1420, which also had spurs at 576.020 or 1152.040 MHz but is working great as a 10 MHz reference shifted upward. By setting the reference appropriately and using a synthesizer programmed for 1152.000000 I can get just about any 10 GHz frequency I want with no spurs and good phase noise. This is a much more frequency agile setup than any previous method tried and will probably be my final solution.

The least expensive off the shelf solution I can see that MIGHT be adequate for even a small dish like my 76cm would be about 2800 USD - the Sub Lunar SDD-3 / Green Heron RT-21 Az/El combination. The strength of such a system is not needed but tracking precision is. Most rotators cannot point precisely enough. A dish this size is 3 dB down at 1.2 degrees off target. It needs to be pointed within half a degree or so for reasonable EME success. If you have a machine shop and you are good with microcontrollers and precision position sensors, you may be able to build something for less money. I do not know if even the Sub Lunar / Green Heron combination has the precision required for a more typical 10 GHz EME dish such as the 1.8m I have in storage. That would need to be pointed even more precisely as it would be 3 dB down at 0.5 degree off target. I suspect the difficulty of aiming a dish precisely enough keeps a lot of people off 10 GHz EME. I have everything required to put my 1.8m dish on EME except for that.

It's good to be working on projects and doing videos again! There should be two or three more videos fairly soon, then another pause. I would be doing this all the time if I could.

Hi Drew. I would be interested in your findings. I need to try to do more phase noise checks on the beacon. Of course phase noise at 10 GHz is much higher than it is at the reference or the 1152 MHz synthesizer output but my beacon is looking better than most that have gone on the air in recent years. Many of them are only 40 to 50 dB down at 10 kHz. Mine looks to be at least 60 dB, possibly a little better than that. I don't have a proper measurement system but if I calibrate the dB scale on the SDR and S meter on the conventional receiver I can get a "no worse than" figure. Of course any estimate made this way is limited by receiver phase noise.

I will call you if I hear you Lou. I don't get on 6 much since all the DX went to digital which isn't near as much fun for me.

Thanks, I am glad you like it.

Hi Rob. 1. I am using Windows 10 Professinal 64 bit, but any recent version should work fine. 2. I'm sorry if I was confusing. You just need a recent version of regular WSJT-X. As long as it included the Q65 mode you are all set. I forget in which version that mode was introduced but it has been there for a while. There is no special version for 10 GHz. Good luck with your project and let me know if you need any other information or assistance. I will do my best to help.

@@n1bug Hi again, and thanks for the info. I do have a question that perhaps you could help with I attempted to set up but when I came to set up the radio selection in WXJT-X. I had no option for the Kenwood 2000 series radio. So as that option available in your WSJT-X or did you somehow add it to the selection. Thanks again Rob.

I apologise it is there! My eyesight failed me.

@@robertlang641 No need to apologise! My eyesight fails me frequently. I'm glad you're making progress.

Hi again getting a bit confused here I'm wondering how to correct the HDSDR frequency for the LNB I know about the manager button and that throws up a frequency but how does one correct for the 9750 Mhz frequency shift to match the dongle frequency Or am I missing something really obvious. Secondly I'm wondering what software you use to send the output from HDSDR to WSJT. Thanks in anticipation. Rob.

Lou, sorry I didn't answer sooner. I am not certain but I have seen evidence that supports a belief that it does scatter polarization somewhat, but not enough to completely randomize it. Measured data on 10 GHz EME signal loss due to polarization misalignment only goes to about 12 dB. At VHF we see at least 20 dB, so it looks to me like polarization is partly "spread" at 10 GHz. This is just a theory based on data I have seen. It makes sense that a rough surface that is moving would do that. I suspect it does to a lesser extent even at much lower frequencies.

It it good to be back at the project(s)

@@n1bug You're above my skill level, but that's how I improve my skills. Thanks for your videos and excellent explanations. 73!

@@n1bug Also, this reminds me of the video that W2AEW did on spurious key clicks coming from a China made 2 meter rig that was part of a repeater site in NYC that was causing horrible interference when it keyed on and off.

I'm subscribed to his channel but I haven't seen that one. I will look it up and watch. Key clicks can be nasty.

Thanks! More beacon videos coming later as the project continues.

The original version of the Arduino code by K6HX is here: brainwagon.org/2009/11/14/another-try-at-an-arduino-based-morse-beacon/ I haven't published my changes yet, because I still have more changes to make for reading temperature sensors and including that data in the beacon message. Let me know if you need any other information.

Thank you!

Thanks Lou. I'm having fun and learning a lot from this project.

Hello Chris, it's a pleasure to hear from you. The camera is my new smartphone, Samsung Galaxy 24 Ultra. I haven't learned 10% of what that camera can do yet. I miss LF tremendously but the antenna caused so much collateral damage when it fell I can't risk it again. I need to fix my LF big K9AY loop so I can at least listen. I got the beacon key clicks eliminated very nicely and will do a video update sometime this week. Very best regards to you.

I agree about the audio level when listening to the signal and apologize for that. I am still learning how to do this. When recording I have no means of knowing what the audio level is. I can adjust in post processing when editing the video but I keep making the mistake of setting the audio level based on my voice and not the signals. When recording it always seems like the receiver audio in the room is less loud than my voice but it doesn't come out that way in the recording. I will try to improve on it next time. Perhaps (this would be more work) the receiver audio should be recorded as a separate track from my narrative. Then the levels could be set independently. The pipe cap video is a long one. My method of doing them ended up being rather unusual but it worked for me. :)

I'm having a lot of fun learning and experimenting with 10 GHz!

Great to hear from you Lou. The beacon is still in development and has not been installed yet. It is destined to go at our repeater site on Stickney Hill when finished. That should be a reasonably good site. With my RX-only dish at home I have heard W1GHZ and several beacons on rain scatter, snow scatter, and tropo.

Thanks for the feedback. There will be at least one more beacon update soon, likely two.

Thanks.

I would like to have a tracking mount but every solution is very expensive. It is the way to go if you can do it.

I'm not sure about a full transmitter but a PA is easy. There are two basic forms, class D and class E. I successfully built and used both on 2200 meters. There are several designs on the web. Information about the two I built and some of my other transmitting and receiving equipment can be found here: www.n1bug.com/lfmf/

@@n1bug alright i will check it out! Thank you!

I worked about half a dozen stations in North America, two on CWE and the rest on digital modes. My best distance QSOs were 2E0ILY, G0MRF and DL7NN on digital modes. I am sure there would have been more but mMy antenna came down in a storm three years ago and I have not been active since.

Wow, that's neat! I'm sorry your antenna came down though, hopefully someday you can put them back up again😊

Thanks. I could put it back up any time. The problem is it caused damage to other antennas, towers and rotators when it fell. All antennas were covered with wet sticky snow at the time. It was a tremendous weight. When the 2200m antenna broke and fell, the sudden reduction in side loads caused both towers to move a bit a top, quite violently. That sudden motion combined with the weight of the snow on everything is what did the damage. I can't risk that happening again. 2220m is a lot of fun!

When you work on everything from old tube radios to tiny SMD stuff, you can never have too many sizes of solder wick. 🙂

@@n1bug i always runout on this wick.... you can never have enough :D

Thanks for the very kind comments. Decoding and hearing EME signals on 10 GHz was a huge thrill for me. I hope others might enjoy it too.

Howdy Lou!

I tried that with one of them but my 70 watt soldering station was not able to get the job done. I tried using a big tip, flux, etc. but it just didn't heat the solder under the pads enough.

I'm not very knowledgeable about radio astronomy but I would say no. With a dish of this size on 10 GHz, the whole sky appears very quiet, so I don't think you will receive enough radio noise from specific sources (other than the sun) to be useful for that purpose.

I haven't personally tried it myself but I bet someone has. There are quite a number of people who are using LEDs (visible and IR) and lasers (gas and solid state) for communication with Morse code, audio, or data. I haven't followed it in a while but years ago I was in a very active online group of experimenters using light communications.

Good luck with your project! I'm going to guess the umbrella dish will not have sufficient surface accuracy for 10 GHz (I could be wrong) but it will surely work well on lower bands.

@@n1bug Going to try 1.2 ghz. Seems like popular band for eme

@@wireworks616 Yes it is a very popular band and your dish should do very well there. I have a 10 foot dish in storage which I would like to use on that band someday.

I am glad we don't get these winds too often. We just had another such storm about two weeks ago. Fortunately this time the only damage was antennas that slipped on the mast, but climbing the mast to reach them was interesting. I enjoy climbing at 59 and hope I have many more years of it. That tower now has the TH11DX at 100 feet, a 10 GHz dish at 106 feet and OptiBeam OB1-4030 at 112 feet. Yes, I had to reach the top antenna!

In the U.S. if you want to transmit using your amateur radio call sign with amateur radio privileges, you must notify UTC and wait at least 30 days to see if they object. If they don't, you are good to go. If you want to transmit with privileges not allowed under amateur radio rules you can apply for a Part 5 license. There are very few of those now that we have amateur privileges on 2200m.

I have been away from YT for a while. I hope your project went smoothly.

I wish I was in the footprint of QO-100. Would be interesting to try that.

Thanks. I have been busy with other things but more coming soon.

Thanks for the comment. I know it is unusual to use washers with jam nuts but I lack the skill to do it without them. The tuning is extremely touchy on the 10 GHz filters. Without the washer, the transition from jam nut putting no tension on the tuning screw and full tension happens in a very small fraction of a turn of the nut. This makes it very difficult for me to keep the filter peaked while tightening the nut. The split washer smooths out the transition, applying tension to the screw more slowly, allowing for it to be more easily re-adjusted as the jam nut is slowly tightened. I wonder if a modification to use a tuning screw with finer thread and/or a thicker nut soldered to the pipe cap would help with this. I will check to see if alternate hardware is available before my next project using pipe cap filters.

Thank you. This is the first time I have heard that the sky is not uniformly quiet at 10 GHz. I know it is not at lower frequencies such as 144 and 432 MHz where I had prior experience. When I asked about using sky/sun/ground noise measurements to evaluate feedhorn (LNB) placement and performance of this system, everyone said it would not matter as long as I was not pointed at the sun or moon. Maybe they meant "with this size dish"? Now I want to do more experimentation with this, when and if I get a dish on a proper mount where I can more easily steer it and up higher where it can see more of the sky without also seeing trees or my other antenna structures.

@@n1bug Here's a paper that compares galactic sky maps made at various frequencies from 10 MHz to 94 GHz. It has a section that shows visual images and references to various studies of the energy received from the sky at different frequencies that might be interesting to you. arxiv dot org/pdf/0802.1525.pdf This is a radio continuum map made of the galactic plane at 10 GHz: cade dot irap dot omp dot eu/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=nobeyama

@@n1bugI'm not sure if the links to those papers are making it through the comment filter or not. Google for "nobeyama 10ghz radio continuum" and you'll get the 10 GHz map of the galactic plane. Google for "arxiv Angelica de Oliveira-costa galactic radio emission" for the paper talking about sky maps at various frequencies. You might find them interesting.