Category Archives: Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio, Computing, Technology

Amateur Satellite – Thesis

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I spotted this on the Southgate Amateur Radio Clubs news feed this morning.  Looking forward to learning something by reading it. Pretty cool project though, it has to be said.

A thesis based on the work done for the SO-67 Amateur Satellite is now available here.

Titled “Reusable Software Defined Radio Platform for Micro-satellites” it was written by John Foster Van Wyk of Stellenbosch University and describes the design and implementation of a software platform for the software defined radio (SDR) that formed part of the Sumbandila (SO-67) Amateur Radio satellite.

The Amateur Radio payload on SO-67 operates in conjunction with the Software Defined Receiver project sharing the VHF receiver and UHF transmitter used by the SDR project.

The nominal frequencies for SO-67 are Uplink 145.875 MHz and Downlink 435.345 MHz +/- Doppler shift

Sumbandila (SO-67) Mission Blog

Southern African Amateur Radio Satellite Association (SA AMSAT) and SO-67 schedule

Getting started on Amateur Radio Satellite

Amateur Radio, General, Technology, Utility Listening

Hope

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Wow, time sure is flying by December 31st already.  Let me see, things of note.  Cormac is building a Millenium Falcon (very cool). Scott has released his new Weather Station, the ADS-WS1. I finally got my head around ALSA’s dsnoop plugin on Linux, which is very handy when trying to stream and record from the same device.

I’ve spent the last two days pulling as many of my MP3’s off a dying drive as possible while playing with an AOR AR5000 that Santa brought me (good man Santa!).

AOR AR5000

Hope-1 was launched on 14th December. This is a big deal as it is (to my knowledge) the first Amateur Satellite launched from China.

See you in 2010.

Amateur Radio, Computing, D-Star

ARRL and TAPR DCC

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I’m not long back from the DCC, and I thought I would comment on it while the memory is still fresh. I had never been before, so I was wondering what I had let myself in for. Well I have to say I had a blast. From my accidental meeting of Larry WR1B on the shuttle to the hotel, to having lunch with the TAPR folks just before I caught my flight home, the atmosphere at the event was all about the sharing of knowledge. Like all good events, most of the really good discussion goes on in the corridors between presentations. Over breakfast, lunch, or indeed in the demo room.

Coolest presentation for me was the HPSDR, Modular Software Defined Radio, and the sheer enthusiasm of the guys was infectious (I want one!).

The picture below shows the set-up (belonging to N8ZM I think) for the tutorial on Sunday morning.  The intention was to monitor the transmitted waveform from the transmit side on the spectrum analyser (large box to the right of picture) and also to receive and decode transmitted signals from Larry WR1B’s recently constructed NEU-PSK (small flat black box). All great fun.

HPSDR

I may not make it next year, or indeed the year after, but I will make it back.