2 days ago
Aqua on X-Band. Pretty crappy pass, but salvaged this crop of Mt. Hood, Hood River and population centers of Eugene, Corvallis, Salem and Portland. https://t.co/Pb97bHVXR5
3 days ago
5+ hours condensed to 1min of Tianwen-1 activity starting just after 1st orbital maneuver. https://t.co/1wRWZq6Iap
4 days ago
Tianwen-1 is approaching apoapsis. The plot shows the ground station handover from Kashi to Zapala/Argentina at 17:08. The Doppler profile results mostly from Earth rotation Doppler in the uplink signal. The spacecraft's orbital Doppler alone is rising steadily now. https://t.co/sLeYvClDpG
Author Archives: trango
AirSpy working with Inmarsat Decoder
My new AirSpy SDR arrived last week. The goal this weekend was to make a small application to stream the IQ over Ethernet and then test it with one of the Inmarsat decoders that I have previously developed. The API … Continue reading
RF Selection for AOR AR2300
In an serious effort to reduce patch panel management, another Mini-Circuits USB 4SPDT-A18 RF Switch has been added. Now, along with the original RF Switch, selections can be made from up to 10 different RF sources, including various dishes, yagis, … Continue reading
Posted in Projects
Blue Force Tracking on Inmarsat
Blue Force Tracking is a GPS-enabled system that give US Military the location of “friendly” military forces. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. Inmarsat is one of the commercial satellite providers that has a contract with the the … Continue reading
Inmarsat Antenna Distribution
Inmarsat L-Band signals from both CONUS and POR need to be routed to various receivers and SDRs, this distribution system is a pretty simple solution (as shown below). It’s based on taking an L-Band signals from a dish, where pre-amplification … Continue reading
XM-1 S-Band Signal
Need to check dish alignment on S-Band? The 12.5MHz XM-1 signal is a great test signal. XM-1 is a much more interesting signal to look at than Sirius. The signal below is using a 1.8m dish.
Chang’e 5-T1 and new 1.8m dish online
New spacecraft and new dish were tested this weekend. The spacecraft is the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1, an experimental unmanned lunar mission that was recently launched by the CNSA. The dish is a 1.8m Prodelin offset and is inverted for ease … Continue reading
Posted in Projects, Spacecraft
Tagged S-Band
Aero Decoding and Full Support for HackRF One
After some work it is now possible to fully support HackRF One with my Inmarsat Aero decoder. In the past, the Inmarsat Aero decoder used two SDRs (each covering 2MHz) to cover up to 4MHz of L-Band spectrum as well … Continue reading
Adding External Reference to HackRF One SDR
The HackRF One SDR is a great value but it’s frequency stability leaves something to be desired. Using the Si5338 clock generator from Silicon Laboratories is an easy way to address the problem (if it’s really a problem for your … Continue reading
HackRF One and Decoders
I’m always looking for opportunities to reduce the costs associated with high quality decoding tasks. The HackRF One is intriguing because it’s not very expensive, has a wide band receiver (10MHz – 6GHz) and an SDR that is capable of … Continue reading
Aero Coverage of POR and CONUS
The diagram below illustrates the current Aero coverage that is possible here at USA-Satcom. As you can see there is quite a bit of IQ bandwidth to deal with and consequently at least two i7 hex core machines are needed … Continue reading
