Fun fact: you can see how long this project took by looking at the "Ride the Sandland Monorail" t-shirt. It goes from black with pristine print to washed out and broken apart print
Hahahaha I have two of the same Cheech and Chong shirt, one that has lasted, and one that's all washed out and faded!! And I save everything for parts (although it's pretty much all 90's Toyota stuff)!!
Absolutely LOVE your videos pal.. It is rare to see people spend to much time on what 'didn't' work. I think you have amazing content! Thank you for sharing with us.
Years ago I made a coat hangar-wire crossed dipole for receiving NOAA signals using a cheap RTL SDR. since then I became a HAM, acquired a hackRF unit and a couple nanoVNAs, plus a few amps and filters. I'm not very well educated in RF and have been trial-and-erroring everything, most of my projects being 2.4 or 5.8 for RC modelling purposes. But satellites are just cool. I have an old 'Dish' network dish with a high power ALFA wifi adapter and patch antenna that can see and connect to networks a mile away. It would be fun to point it skyward, but it is small for the frequencies used by SSTV and the like. Your channel is always an inspiration!
And cheaper! Also some improvement with HF. I can't remember off the top of my head. Down side I guess is its using a discontinued chip and it will be a limited run supposedly.
@@catsdontboot8735 what issues did you run into? I got a v4 a couple of weeks ago and just installed the AUR package for the new driver and it worked fine
A big help when antenna testing HRPT is to use the GOES HRIT downlink at 1694MHz as a received signal strength reference. It's close enough in frequency and always there!
You have reignited my love for HAM radio these last few months. I’m nowhere near your level but enjoy tinkering around. Back in 2010 I was using a CB radio and somehow managed to skip trace from Vancouver BC Canada to Louisiana. My passion for radios took off at that point. Love your channel, never stop being authentic. It’s refreshing!
Get your license if you don't have one already! There's a ton of people out there talking on the sats. I've made contacts with people from Alaska to Arizona here in Vancouver through the ISS.
Thanks for showing your "failures". Without mistakes, you cannot learn, and its clear you learned some things while making mistakes here. Good job! I learned a few things from watching your attempts as well.
I have been building QFH antennas for 70cms ham band and they were a challenge, pain in the butt, to adjust and tune, so going to 1.7 Ghz will only make that worse. Some times the simple approach is better, 1/4 ground plane! But you video proved my motto, "Don't be afraid to try it."
I love your channel man even though English isn’t my native language I can understand you clearly, you’re inspiring me and I think I found a new hobby, I gotta mess around with it. Greetings from the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴 🌴
love your channel and recommend to all my buddies. most of my friends are programmers and struggle with the practical aspect of what you do. there is a lot of genuine fascination with these topics
I wouldn't think it would be too hard to make low-power test transmitter that has harmonics at 1.6GHz, which you could use to align the antenna to the dish and compare different antennas in a static environment.
Don't comment or watch youtube vids much on people doing stuff, but enjoy watch your vids! keep up the great work! I enjoy the honesty about the shopping list, not a fan when people ask me that question about what do i use.
Others who have had success with small antennas and HRPT have used a regular (NOT QFH) helical feed with a reflector plate. They are easy to make from "random parts". The circumference of the helix is about 1 wavelength, with a roughly 0.2 wavelength spacing between the windings. The more windings, the higher the gain. You want to tune the gain of the feed to properly match your dish. For a high F/D dish (like an offset type), you'll want probably 5-6 windings, whereas for a prime-focus dish in the 0.35-0.42 F/D range, you'll probably want about 3-4 windings.
Appreciate the perseverance! I have almost no idea what you’re ever talking about…but always enjoy the process from the crazy guy with all the satellite dishes in his yard, who lives across from the cemetery, and sports a SPAM bumper sticker. 😊
Back in the 80's, I used to download WEFAX pictures using a shortwave radio, a Radio Shack Color computer 2 (Coco2) computer, and a piece of software off of CompuServe's BBS server, and a homemade multi band wire antenna. What an adventure. Late one night, i downloaded a weather fax pic from Rome, Italy. It had some noise in it but was quite clear. I had a lot of fun with that.
Saw your channel just last week.. Really Love watching your videos. The best part is you share your failed attempts aswell which helps us to learn more. Keep making such videos even if video duration exceeds an hour. Thanks for sharing such informative content ! Definitely learned a lot from it..💙
I am so excited to see what you do with the efforts on satellite tracking hardware! I can only imagine what your brain will focus on when you have the freedom from physical limitations! :D
Hey dude, i am experiencing fail after fail trying to get goes east. I am happy to see how "not easy" this is and now i am inspired to keep going. So thanks!
You have more patience than I do, but this is really motivational as well. Thanks for sharing the trials as well as the successes... this is the true spirit of amateur radio!
The antenna you made (monopole) looked great except the strongest signal is not out the tip of the monopole but to the side. Could you put a dipole antenna in the focus?
I love this video. ... I agree, the 1/4 wave antenna receives best (in theory) in a direction perpendicular to the radiator. I also agree (FWIW) that a simple dipole would be good to try, and easy to make, test & setup. It should be 1.65 inches for each of the two legs. (Maybe you already tried this? It seems like a dipole would always be a good base-line to compare everything else too). Sorry if you already did this in another video and I missed it. .... This looks really fun. Time for me to order a RTL-SDR. 👍👍
Except that when mounted in the dish, the angle of the waves coming in would be at an angle on the sides, from the parabolic reflection. It would be interesting to see a comparison, but to remove variables it would need to be aimed at a geostationary sat.
This is super cool! I'm sure you were getting discouraged, but you stuck with it and got it, that's awesome. Also I had no idea you could get images like that, I don't really know anything about satellites or radio, but it seems like a really interesting hobby. What resolution were those images?
Yep, the Nano VNA is a great tool. I bought one in early November & its still in the box needing calibrated. I am looking forward to using it, especially the feature that plots onto the Smith Chart which is actually just the Extended Complex Plane or Riemann Sphere where knowing that takes the mystery out of the chart. I also bought a new RS 918 about the same time. The new rig stayed in the box for 6 weeks too because I have conceivably too many projects. Eventually firing up the rig showed it came with a broken mic. At least the new mic arrived today and now, crossed fingers, the RS 918 is up and running for good. By the way it is a fabulous receiver, better than my old Kenwood or even my RSP-1A. Its terribly cold here in the Catskills such as 13 degrees for a high, but this spring I want to take the old satellite dish I found along the road and my RSP-1A along with the fitting LNA and then give satellites a go prior to stepping deeper in the rabbit hole of all things related to radio astronomy. I certainly appreciate your videos and they are both informative & entertaining.so, good luck in all things salvaged and 73 from de kc2wvb.
I love your enthusiasm, and desire to succeed, despite the numerous setbacks. Well done. Time to polish up on your welding skills, ready for phase two of your ground station. 😂
Really digging your videos dude! In the last few seconds of the video I realized I could see my house in that image, it's the one just a little south of Lake Erie among the noise band in Ohio!
Your vertical element is wrongly orientated at the dishes focal point. You have the monopole pointing toward the dish. However the signal will be hitting the element end on, where the ground plane has least gain. Rotate the antenna at the feed point so the connector pokes out of a side, ideally parallel to the satellite track, and I think you'll get a better signal. A dipole may be a better choice. I've also seen people remove the SAW filter from active GPS antennas. Good luck! Watching with interest. 73, M1GEO.
A Cantenna works good with a dish reflector too. Its not circular polarized but give good 'illumination' of dish. I used one to pick up 2 GHz 25 miles away in the 1980s.
I'm surprised that improvisation at the end worked! The QFH definitely isn't suited for HRPT though, since its omnidirectional, you just want the signal reflected from the dish, so more directional antennas will give more gain, usually a helical is used but this is a surprising substitute!
I just got into HRPT, I use a 65cm offset dish with a DIY 5.5 turn LHCP helical antenna and a Sawbird+ Goes LNA and I'm having surprisingly good results! I also made a mount to hold my phone at the correct angle do I can load Look4Sat which makes hand tracking much easier!
I really enjoy seeing the process of learning these new topics! A vertical antenna like that has a radiation pattern like a doughnut with a very large null in the direction it is pointing. You may get better reception by rotating the element.
We used to use 12m tracking antennas for commanding the old TIROS birds plus a few others that shall not be named. Had a quick change from one satellite to another so had to quickly swing the dish clear over. Both of the stop sensors were broken so the dish kept going. Incredible how much noise a 40ft dish makes as it crashes through the stops. Old Microdyne receivers used to be about $20K each and weighed about 20Kg but had pretty limited baseband compared to today. Also used to design telemetry frame synchronizers. Early ones were huge (VME cards) and had a max receive bit rate of 5Mbps. Current generation is about the size of a dollar bill (PCIe card) and is rated for 200Mbps but can go much faster. Xilinx software said it would hold on at 400Mbps but never have seen how fast it really can go. Seldom to see a data stream up above 100Mbps but there are a few up there. Back in those olden days - satellite telemetry design used to be "fun". Now it's all cookie cutter stuff.
Interesting stuff! I only understood some of that, but it sounds really cool. This is why I keep trying to learn more about satellite and comm stuff, there's so much interesting info and equipment out there!
here is an interesting experiment required: 275mm glass coke bottle foxconn copper heatsink (detachable fins) micro filament wire sharp kitchen scissors construction: take the fins from the heatsink and using the scissors cut them into strips approx 6 - 8mm each. (they will spiral wonderfully) wrap the micro filament around the outside of the lower part of the bottle. place the copper spirals inside the bottle. aero acoustic resonance takes place probably am/fm.. didnt have an sdr at the time when i did it, but run a microphone through spectrum lab. could also make interesting balun / improvised feed horn. a couple of other things... ruckus wireless access point has interesting internals.. and have you considered a couple of counter rotating discone spaced apart by the width of a geostationary satellite for your microwave scan? cool channel, keep it going 🙂
I don’t think this necessarily contributed to any of your problems, it’s just something to be aware of. In mobile phone network land, the AWS band is in the neighborhood of 1700 MHz for the talk-in, meaning the user equipment such as cell phone or m2m device transmits there. So depending on your mobile phone model and provider and whether or not the provider has deployed AWS nearby, your phone could be transmitting a high enough signal, if close enough your satellite antenna, to make your satellite receiver unhappy. EDIT: fixed a couple of eyePhone typos.
woah! dude I learn something new literally almost every video you drop. you have a seriously cool set of skills. about thing the only thing i can do close to this level is build fpv quad copters lol. but...data from space....waaayyy cooler than any quadcopter. this is mind blowingly amazing. thank you for you time and effort and energy to put out these videos. i learn a lot from you. keep it up man!
Thank you for showing us some ways that don't work. As Thomas Edison said, 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.' In the end, it did work, the high frequencies are a challenge.
Glad you managed to get a signal at the end! (even if you hadn't it'd still have persuaded me to finally order a NanoVNA!). For the AZ/EL project, two "scrap" options come to mind; treadmills with adjustable incline have a chunky motor & acme screw mechanism in them. Also, electronic power steering from cars (I worked on Mazda 2s around 2010 in Australia that used it, but many other cars do). In the ones I worked on it was a big 12V DC brushed motor driving a pinion gear on the steering rack - essentially a high torque linear actuator (with ball joints on the end, perfect to attach to a dish).
Ooh, good ideas on the motors! I did just order a sketchy solar panel az/el mount from China, so we'll see if that's usable when it shows up in 3 months 😂
As others have said you are completely misunderstanding the radiation pattern required for a dish feed. The QFH anntenna are for omindirectional use on their own, they have poor directivity into the the dish. The technical term is dish illumination. the feed point antenna fires at the dish surface for maximum illumination.A simple dipole with a reflector plate behind it would be a better starting point.
Awesome vid. I’ve been wondering, where do you find your resources for all this stuff? Things like tutorials, satellite frequencies, etc. I know its a super general question but when i try and google anything i only find links to buy satellite internet
I usually try to link to some of my resources in the description. Some of the sites I've found useful are: usradioguy.com/ (lots of great satellite info!) uhf-satcom.com/satellite-reception (some good info on different radio bands) www.satdump.org/Satellite-List/ (More satellite frequencies, and decoding software) www.n2yo.com/ (satellite orbits and predictions) satbeams.com/ (satellite signals and status) sky.rogue.space/ (3D visualization of different orbits) space.skyrocket.de/index.html (satellite general info) www.dishpointer.com/ (where to aim a dish for geostationary satellites) in-the-sky.org/satmap_planetarium.php (one I recently found that visualizes orbits) There are probably some others, I can try to do a writeup on my website at some point!
I'm pretty sure the reason the little stick antenna is working is the dish isnt too perfect and the element placement is meh, which is actually scuffing your antenna gain for the better. what youre trying to do if you do successfully get a working qfh will require some serious precision because your dish will create such a fine pin point you have to aim and if youre off even a little your signal goes missing fast. not too sure on your options but if you have something in the 1.6ish ghz range that is geosynchronous, you should just aim it at that and then spend somany hours tweaking your setup till you have a very good signal to noise on it.
Amazing journey, thanks for sharing! A 3d printer and an equatorial telescope mount could be helpful for a DIY tracker. Motor brackets, to upgrade the telescope, can be found on thingiverse etc. I look forward to see your way of doing it if/when you get to it 😄
SDR's can be such a headache when they mess you around. The antenna rotator would be a great project, anything to make your life easier while operating is great! I feel ya on the shed clutter, it's damn hard to stop it getting out of control.
If you take a look at a GPS antenna it is pretty much a dual layer copper circuit board cut to a specific dimension. Could you be able to use something similar for a better antenna receiver for the higher GHz Band signals? Could use the VNA as a testing unit to fine tune the home made antenna receiver
I saw the star link satellites fly over my house/town the other night. They were lit up blue, in a line about 20 of them, and they went by pretty quick!
*"the bigger the dish the better the gain the better the signal you'll get but also the smaller the focal point"* I think you are confusing the focal point with the beamwidth, The focal point is the size and location if the point at which the reflector focuses the RF energy at a point in front of the reflector. The beamwidth is how narrow of a beam that the reflector has. Look at like a flash light that has a tight beam versus one with a wide beam. I believe your collapsible reflector was designed by a man named Robert Luliey I don;t know if I spelled his last correctly or not!
I lust after that folding dish. Not really found anything similar to it. Because of you I may be dragging a 9-12' cband dish and some older KU stuff from work to start snooping on the free to air and weather satellites. I didn't know there was much of anything left on the old birds other than us radio stations using them for network audio downlinks but looking at some stuff here it seems there are quite a few unencrypted things that pop up. Also thinking moon bounce in the future.
The NOAA "brids" also carry SAR payloads (search and rescue) for picking up ELT transmissions, and then relaying them to ground stations. I don't know whether those down-links are "secured" or not, nor what the formats are, etc.
That's something I have on my list as well. I think GPS satellites also have a repeater for 403mhz to something else. Apparently they sometimes pick up random transmissions from other equipment, foreign TV, etc.
406MHz and I recall that the actual TX frequency is randomly assigned over a small range so that no two TX in the same sat coverage zone are likely to collide.
Most people waste money on cars and motorcycles. Gabe buys Monorails, digs caves, talks to the International Space Station, gets free cable too. I wonder which hobby produces a longer legacy.
39" (~1m) dishes are routinely available on eBay and they're normally used for Ku-band satellite reception. Using a helical feed of about 5 turns and an appropriate LNA+Filter (Like the SAWBird), success should be fairly easy. Obviously, the bigger the dish, the less you have to worry about optimizing the *OTHER* parts of the system, but they're harder to come by, and are harder to point.
I applaud your ability to optimistically persevere when nothing seems to work at first - that's the best way to learn.
Fun fact: you can see how long this project took by looking at the "Ride the Sandland Monorail" t-shirt. It goes from black with pristine print to washed out and broken apart print
I actually have two of those shirts, the one from Teespring started falling apart, while the one from Spreadshirt is holding up better :-)
@@saveitforparts 😂
Hahahaha I have two of the same Cheech and Chong shirt, one that has lasted, and one that's all washed out and faded!! And I save everything for parts (although it's pretty much all 90's Toyota stuff)!!
Been watching for about 6 months now.. Always love your topics! Hope you’re doing well! You deserve it!
Absolutely LOVE your videos pal..
It is rare to see people spend to much time on what 'didn't' work.
I think you have amazing content!
Thank you for sharing with us.
No experiment is ever a failure. You just eliminate another method that didn't work...
Years ago I made a coat hangar-wire crossed dipole for receiving NOAA signals using a cheap RTL SDR. since then I became a HAM, acquired a hackRF unit and a couple nanoVNAs, plus a few amps and filters. I'm not very well educated in RF and have been trial-and-erroring everything, most of my projects being 2.4 or 5.8 for RC modelling purposes. But satellites are just cool. I have an old 'Dish' network dish with a high power ALFA wifi adapter and patch antenna that can see and connect to networks a mile away. It would be fun to point it skyward, but it is small for the frequencies used by SSTV and the like. Your channel is always an inspiration!
Your honesty and openness about you learning as you go is what I love about this channel 😊
RTL-SDR has a v4 out now that supposedly is awesome and generates a lot less heat. Can't wait to try one!
And cheaper! Also some improvement with HF. I can't remember off the top of my head. Down side I guess is its using a discontinued chip and it will be a limited run supposedly.
The improvement was that there is now an built-in downconverter, rather than having to use direct sampling IIRC@@ericgulseth74
@@ericgulseth74 Also it uses a different driver, which for me was a hassle to set up on Arch Linux.
@@catsdontboot8735 what issues did you run into? I got a v4 a couple of weeks ago and just installed the AUR package for the new driver and it worked fine
A big help when antenna testing HRPT is to use the GOES HRIT downlink at 1694MHz as a received signal strength reference. It's close enough in frequency and always there!
You have reignited my love for HAM radio these last few months. I’m nowhere near your level but enjoy tinkering around. Back in 2010 I was using a CB radio and somehow managed to skip trace from Vancouver BC Canada to Louisiana. My passion for radios took off at that point. Love your channel, never stop being authentic. It’s refreshing!
Get your license if you don't have one already! There's a ton of people out there talking on the sats. I've made contacts with people from Alaska to Arizona here in Vancouver through the ISS.
The North Van, Surrey, Langley and Delta clubs run courses regularly. Join your nearest club!!
I’m a ham radio operator.. No real knowledge of satellite… But I’m enjoying learning along with you….. Thanks for Sharing…⚡️
Can't wait for your future uploads. Really curious on your antenna mover / rotor design.
Thanks for showing your "failures". Without mistakes, you cannot learn, and its clear you learned some things while making mistakes here. Good job! I learned a few things from watching your attempts as well.
I have been building QFH antennas for 70cms ham band and they were a challenge, pain in the butt, to adjust and tune, so going to 1.7 Ghz will only make that worse. Some times the simple approach is better, 1/4 ground plane! But you video proved my motto, "Don't be afraid to try it."
I love your channel man even though English isn’t my native language I can understand you clearly, you’re inspiring me and I think I found a new hobby, I gotta mess around with it. Greetings from the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴 🌴
It is awesome to see your videos doing so well!!! Being recomended allongside a lot of popular youtubers! 😊
Very cool!
love your channel and recommend to all my buddies. most of my friends are programmers and struggle with the practical aspect of what you do. there is a lot of genuine fascination with these topics
these sat videos are amazing, dont feel like you need to be an expert this is great learning experience for everyone, thank you so so much for these
I wouldn't think it would be too hard to make low-power test transmitter that has harmonics at 1.6GHz, which you could use to align the antenna to the dish and compare different antennas in a static environment.
All that data at the end makes it all worth it, you are getting so close, man. I am rooting for you!
Don't comment or watch youtube vids much on people doing stuff, but enjoy watch your vids! keep up the great work! I enjoy the honesty about the shopping list, not a fan when people ask me that question about what do i use.
Others who have had success with small antennas and HRPT have used a regular (NOT QFH) helical feed with a reflector plate. They are easy to make from "random parts". The circumference of the helix is about 1 wavelength, with a roughly 0.2 wavelength spacing between the windings. The more windings, the higher the gain. You want to tune the gain of the feed to properly match your dish. For a high F/D dish (like an offset type), you'll want probably 5-6 windings, whereas for a prime-focus dish in the 0.35-0.42 F/D range, you'll probably want about 3-4 windings.
Appreciate the perseverance! I have almost no idea what you’re ever talking about…but always enjoy the process from the crazy guy with all the satellite dishes in his yard, who lives across from the cemetery, and sports a SPAM bumper sticker. 😊
Found your content after trying (and failing) at the same stuff. Glad to see I'm not the only one struggling. Thanks for the tips!
never stop making videos, i get super inspired from them... thank you
Back in the 80's, I used to download WEFAX pictures using a shortwave radio, a Radio Shack Color computer 2 (Coco2) computer, and a piece of software off of CompuServe's BBS server, and a homemade multi band wire antenna. What an adventure. Late one night, i downloaded a weather fax pic from Rome, Italy. It had some noise in it but was quite clear. I had a lot of fun with that.
That garage is made of years of hard work
Saw your channel just last week.. Really Love watching your videos. The best part is you share your failed attempts aswell which helps us to learn more. Keep making such videos even if video duration exceeds an hour. Thanks for sharing such informative content ! Definitely learned a lot from it..💙
Best channel find in ages! I love the parts bin ethos, and I envy your ability to manage more complicated projects.
You might consider this incremental progress, but the entertainment and education was a rousing success! Keep going, we love it
You're slowly inspiring me to get into a hobby that I absolutely do not need to get into. My workspace is bad enough as it is.
I am so excited to see what you do with the efforts on satellite tracking hardware! I can only imagine what your brain will focus on when you have the freedom from physical limitations! :D
Love your antenna videos and that you post your successes and failures. Really helps learn
Really enjoying your videos. I appreciate that you don't try to sanitize everything. People need to fail to learn.
i always get exited when you post a video. love the content
Eggssscellent. Persistence is the key to progress, indeed. That's why I like this channel. Good work!
Hey dude, i am experiencing fail after fail trying to get goes east. I am happy to see how "not easy" this is and now i am inspired to keep going. So thanks!
I appreciate your video too. Your way of doing things until they work without giving up Is quite a thing I would clap for.
You have more patience than I do, but this is really motivational as well. Thanks for sharing the trials as well as the successes... this is the true spirit of amateur radio!
I believe NASA has used a few zip ties and some duct tape in some of their projects. You're in good company. Great video.
👍 and 2mm think Tin foil that could withstand tremendous speeds.. those NASA guys really make me proud to be a liar
@@cstew8355 - You are not a liar LOL But my pants are on fire... someone pulled my finger while they had a lit cigarette. 😱😂🤣💣
We love the learning process of you tinkering with parts, especially satellites/radio.
Even though i'm not into satellites i just love your style man, never change!
That's amazing that you finally got the image. Love seeing the process and the progress!
Love all your work and time you put in too the hobby's
The antenna you made (monopole) looked great except the strongest signal is not out the tip of the monopole but to the side. Could you put a dipole antenna in the focus?
I love this video. ... I agree, the 1/4 wave antenna receives best (in theory) in a direction perpendicular to the radiator. I also agree (FWIW) that a simple dipole would be good to try, and easy to make, test & setup. It should be 1.65 inches for each of the two legs. (Maybe you already tried this? It seems like a dipole would always be a good base-line to compare everything else too). Sorry if you already did this in another video and I missed it. .... This looks really fun. Time for me to order a RTL-SDR. 👍👍
Except that when mounted in the dish, the angle of the waves coming in would be at an angle on the sides, from the parabolic reflection. It would be interesting to see a comparison, but to remove variables it would need to be aimed at a geostationary sat.
This is super cool! I'm sure you were getting discouraged, but you stuck with it and got it, that's awesome. Also I had no idea you could get images like that, I don't really know anything about satellites or radio, but it seems like a really interesting hobby. What resolution were those images?
The HRPT images from NOAA are about 1km / pixel, and APT (older VHF signal that's easier to get) is only about 4km / pixel.
Thanks for your picture, always a pleasure. Was funny to do some "forensic" to find your place on Google Earth :-)
Yep, the Nano VNA is a great tool. I bought one in early November & its still in the box needing calibrated. I am looking forward to using it, especially the feature that plots onto the Smith Chart which is actually just the Extended Complex Plane or Riemann Sphere where knowing that takes the mystery out of the chart.
I also bought a new RS 918 about the same time. The new rig stayed in the box for 6 weeks too because I have conceivably too many projects.
Eventually firing up the rig showed it came with a broken mic. At least the new mic arrived today and now, crossed fingers, the RS 918 is up and running for good. By the way it is a fabulous receiver, better than my old Kenwood or even my RSP-1A.
Its terribly cold here in the Catskills such as 13 degrees for a high, but this spring I want to take the old satellite dish I found along the road and my RSP-1A along with the fitting LNA and then give satellites a go prior to stepping deeper in the rabbit hole of all things related to radio astronomy.
I certainly appreciate your videos and they are both informative & entertaining.so, good luck in all things salvaged and 73 from de kc2wvb.
I love your enthusiasm, and desire to succeed, despite the numerous setbacks. Well done.
Time to polish up on your welding skills, ready for phase two of your ground station. 😂
Really digging your videos dude! In the last few seconds of the video I realized I could see my house in that image, it's the one just a little south of Lake Erie among the noise band in Ohio!
Great video! thanks for sticking with it and showing us the progress along the way!
Your vertical element is wrongly orientated at the dishes focal point. You have the monopole pointing toward the dish. However the signal will be hitting the element end on, where the ground plane has least gain.
Rotate the antenna at the feed point so the connector pokes out of a side, ideally parallel to the satellite track, and I think you'll get a better signal. A dipole may be a better choice.
I've also seen people remove the SAW filter from active GPS antennas.
Good luck! Watching with interest.
73, M1GEO.
A Cantenna works good with a dish reflector too. Its not circular polarized but give good 'illumination' of dish. I used one to pick up 2 GHz 25 miles away in the 1980s.
I use a cantenna for GOES satellites, that's in an upcoming video and an older one where I extended one of the little Ku-band dishes.
Loving your content and quiet enthusiasm.
Learn by doing. Best teacher ever.
If you don’t fail you don’t learn 😀 great vid.
Well done. Thanks for sharing your trials. We are always learning.
Great result and worth the effort. Really enjoyed watching your progress well done keep it up.
Cant wait to see what the future projects are, even if they fail
I'm surprised that improvisation at the end worked! The QFH definitely isn't suited for HRPT though, since its omnidirectional, you just want the signal reflected from the dish, so more directional antennas will give more gain, usually a helical is used but this is a surprising substitute!
I just got into HRPT, I use a 65cm offset dish with a DIY 5.5 turn LHCP helical antenna and a Sawbird+ Goes LNA and I'm having surprisingly good results! I also made a mount to hold my phone at the correct angle do I can load Look4Sat which makes hand tracking much easier!
I really enjoy seeing the process of learning these new topics! A vertical antenna like that has a radiation pattern like a doughnut with a very large null in the direction it is pointing. You may get better reception by rotating the element.
Love the folding antenna, it’s awesome. Need to find one myself. Cheers
We used to use 12m tracking antennas for commanding the old TIROS birds plus a few others that shall not be named. Had a quick change from one satellite to another so had to quickly swing the dish clear over. Both of the stop sensors were broken so the dish kept going. Incredible how much noise a 40ft dish makes as it crashes through the stops.
Old Microdyne receivers used to be about $20K each and weighed about 20Kg but had pretty limited baseband compared to today.
Also used to design telemetry frame synchronizers. Early ones were huge (VME cards) and had a max receive bit rate of 5Mbps. Current generation is about the size of a dollar bill (PCIe card) and is rated for 200Mbps but can go much faster. Xilinx software said it would hold on at 400Mbps but never have seen how fast it really can go. Seldom to see a data stream up above 100Mbps but there are a few up there.
Back in those olden days - satellite telemetry design used to be "fun". Now it's all cookie cutter stuff.
Interesting stuff! I only understood some of that, but it sounds really cool. This is why I keep trying to learn more about satellite and comm stuff, there's so much interesting info and equipment out there!
Fantastic learning curve fantastic effort fantastic job from London England UK
here is an interesting experiment
required:
275mm glass coke bottle
foxconn copper heatsink (detachable fins)
micro filament wire
sharp kitchen scissors
construction:
take the fins from the heatsink and using the scissors cut them into strips approx 6 - 8mm each. (they will spiral wonderfully)
wrap the micro filament around the outside of the lower part of the bottle.
place the copper spirals inside the bottle.
aero acoustic resonance takes place probably am/fm.. didnt have an sdr at the time when i did it, but run a microphone through spectrum lab. could also make interesting balun / improvised feed horn.
a couple of other things... ruckus wireless access point has interesting internals.. and have you considered a couple of counter rotating discone spaced apart by the width of a geostationary satellite for your microwave scan?
cool channel, keep it going 🙂
Uh, a new video - I already binged the rest, so thanks for making me happy today! ;)
Great Video.
You bring an Energy into your videos, that is rarely found on the internet! :)
Great job. I always find the meteor satellites the easiest ones to follow, metop is the hardest.
I don’t think this necessarily contributed to any of your problems, it’s just something to be aware of. In mobile phone network land, the AWS band is in the neighborhood of 1700 MHz for the talk-in, meaning the user equipment such as cell phone or m2m device transmits there. So depending on your mobile phone model and provider and whether or not the provider has deployed AWS nearby, your phone could be transmitting a high enough signal, if close enough your satellite antenna, to make your satellite receiver unhappy.
EDIT: fixed a couple of eyePhone typos.
nice video, as always, excited for those teased projects at the end!
I love your videos! They inspire me to get myself into stuff like that.
This is a great story of persistence!
Love your videos, honesty and tenacity! Good video man! 👍
woah! dude I learn something new literally almost every video you drop. you have a seriously cool set of skills. about thing the only thing i can do close to this level is build fpv quad copters lol. but...data from space....waaayyy cooler than any quadcopter. this is mind blowingly amazing. thank you for you time and effort and energy to put out these videos. i learn a lot from you. keep it up man!
Thank you for showing us some ways that don't work. As Thomas Edison said, 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.' In the end, it did work, the high frequencies are a challenge.
Thank you for your time and effort. You do really cool stuff!!!
Dude. So great. Well done. Again. Thanks for all the effort.
Glad you managed to get a signal at the end! (even if you hadn't it'd still have persuaded me to finally order a NanoVNA!).
For the AZ/EL project, two "scrap" options come to mind; treadmills with adjustable incline have a chunky motor & acme screw mechanism in them. Also, electronic power steering from cars (I worked on Mazda 2s around 2010 in Australia that used it, but many other cars do). In the ones I worked on it was a big 12V DC brushed motor driving a pinion gear on the steering rack - essentially a high torque linear actuator (with ball joints on the end, perfect to attach to a dish).
Ooh, good ideas on the motors! I did just order a sketchy solar panel az/el mount from China, so we'll see if that's usable when it shows up in 3 months 😂
As others have said you are completely misunderstanding the radiation pattern required for a dish feed. The QFH anntenna are for omindirectional use on their own, they have poor directivity into the the dish. The technical term is dish illumination. the feed point antenna fires at the dish surface for maximum illumination.A simple dipole with a reflector plate behind it would be a better starting point.
love the whole video. that is a nice way to learn. hey let's build a tracker for that antenna!!!
Just a thought.
Could you use multiple mobile sat dishes as signal strength finders and make your dish always point the right way?
Awesome vid. I’ve been wondering, where do you find your resources for all this stuff? Things like tutorials, satellite frequencies, etc. I know its a super general question but when i try and google anything i only find links to buy satellite internet
I usually try to link to some of my resources in the description. Some of the sites I've found useful are:
usradioguy.com/ (lots of great satellite info!)
uhf-satcom.com/satellite-reception (some good info on different radio bands)
www.satdump.org/Satellite-List/ (More satellite frequencies, and decoding software)
www.n2yo.com/ (satellite orbits and predictions)
satbeams.com/ (satellite signals and status)
sky.rogue.space/ (3D visualization of different orbits)
space.skyrocket.de/index.html (satellite general info)
www.dishpointer.com/ (where to aim a dish for geostationary satellites)
in-the-sky.org/satmap_planetarium.php (one I recently found that visualizes orbits)
There are probably some others, I can try to do a writeup on my website at some point!
@@saveitforparts Awesome, this is exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks! Getting into this hobby thanks to you :)
Very very cool and inspiring content, friend! I love it!!
I really love that dish. I wish i had one :(
I'm pretty sure the reason the little stick antenna is working is the dish isnt too perfect and the element placement is meh, which is actually scuffing your antenna gain for the better. what youre trying to do if you do successfully get a working qfh will require some serious precision because your dish will create such a fine pin point you have to aim and if youre off even a little your signal goes missing fast.
not too sure on your options but if you have something in the 1.6ish ghz range that is geosynchronous, you should just aim it at that and then spend somany hours tweaking your setup till you have a very good signal to noise on it.
Amazing journey, thanks for sharing! A 3d printer and an equatorial telescope mount could be helpful for a DIY tracker. Motor brackets, to upgrade the telescope, can be found on thingiverse etc.
I look forward to see your way of doing it if/when you get to it 😄
I was thinking the same thing. Even manually moving the antenna on a equatorial mount might help.
SDR's can be such a headache when they mess you around.
The antenna rotator would be a great project, anything to make your life easier while operating is great!
I feel ya on the shed clutter, it's damn hard to stop it getting out of control.
If you take a look at a GPS antenna it is pretty much a dual layer copper circuit board cut to a specific dimension. Could you be able to use something similar for a better antenna receiver for the higher GHz Band signals? Could use the VNA as a testing unit to fine tune the home made antenna receiver
The slot or patch antennas are pretty gutsy
This was very fun and informative! Thanks for sharing!!!
I saw the star link satellites fly over my house/town the other night. They were lit up blue, in a line about 20 of them, and they went by pretty quick!
I've only seen those once, I always forget to look when they do a new batch. Very fun to see!
*"the bigger the dish the better the gain the better the signal you'll get but also the smaller the focal point"*
I think you are confusing the focal point with the beamwidth, The focal point is the size and location if the point at which the reflector focuses the RF energy at a point in front of the reflector. The beamwidth is how narrow of a beam that the reflector has. Look at like a flash light that has a tight beam versus one with a wide beam.
I believe your collapsible reflector was designed by a man named Robert Luliey I don;t know if I spelled his last correctly or not!
I lust after that folding dish. Not really found anything similar to it. Because of you I may be dragging a 9-12' cband dish and some older KU stuff from work to start snooping on the free to air and weather satellites. I didn't know there was much of anything left on the old birds other than us radio stations using them for network audio downlinks but looking at some stuff here it seems there are quite a few unencrypted things that pop up. Also thinking moon bounce in the future.
Love these videos brother. Keep it up!
The NOAA "brids" also carry SAR payloads (search and rescue) for picking up ELT transmissions, and then relaying them to ground stations. I don't know whether those down-links are "secured" or not, nor what the formats are, etc.
That's something I have on my list as well. I think GPS satellites also have a repeater for 403mhz to something else. Apparently they sometimes pick up random transmissions from other equipment, foreign TV, etc.
406MHz and I recall that the actual TX frequency is randomly assigned over a small range so that no two TX in the same sat coverage zone are likely to collide.
Amazing! Great work. Inspiring
I love your work!
Such a lovely Wifi Antenna you made there!
Most people waste money on cars and motorcycles. Gabe buys Monorails, digs caves, talks to the International Space Station, gets free cable too.
I wonder which hobby produces a longer legacy.
39" (~1m) dishes are routinely available on eBay and they're normally used for Ku-band satellite reception. Using a helical feed of about 5 turns and an appropriate LNA+Filter (Like the SAWBird), success should be fairly easy. Obviously, the bigger the dish, the less you have to worry about optimizing the *OTHER* parts of the system, but they're harder to come by, and are harder to point.
The bigger the dish, the narrower the beamwidth, so as you said you have to be a lot more accurate with the pointing