W2MMD Satellite Blog

Tonight on the Thursday night GCARC net there was some discussion about digipeating your signal thru the ISS and NO-84 satellite. This is detailed in the December 2018 issue of QST so I won't repeat those details, but here's a quick write-up of that process and how I made it work. Both NO-84 and the ISS use the standard AX-25 packet protocol that's used for terrestrial APRS, so you can use any of the radios that already have APRS built in. Many HTs will work, but I used the SDR radios at the GCARC clubhouse by connecting remotely through the VPN connection (see this article on how the VPN control works). I connected my local copy of SDR Console to the server copy on the clubhouse satellite computer and used the Funcube radio as the receiver. I also connected my local copy of of PST Rotator in client mode to the server copy at the clubhouse so I could control the rotator remotely. After that I was able to hear the satellite. But we don't just want to hear the satelli...

SatNOGS is a great way for individuals tracking satellites to obtain telemetry from sites throughout the world, but apparently some of the ham satellite groups can't get their telemetry directly from SatNOGS. Instead the users must download the audio files and upload them through the respective telemetry decoders. K2ZA and I spent some time today working out those processes, which are described below. Install Audacity Download and install the free Audacity program. You'll use that to load the .ogg files that are exported from SatNOGS. Download the .ogg files from SatNogs Navigate to the SatNOGS observation that you want to use and download the audio file using the button below the radar track in the lower left part of the screen. This file will be formatted as a .ogg file. Neither the Fox nor Funcube programs can read these files - they'll need to be converted or played back into the telemetry decoder. Open the .ogg file in Audacity Here's how a Fox telem...

Astronauts on the International Space Stations have recently been having conversations with school students and one QSO was captured by our station on November 13. In  this recording astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor answers questions from school students about the experience of being in space. We can only hear one side of the conversation (hence the periods of static on the recording) but it's still pretty cool that we were able to copy that pass. Below is the SatNOGS dashboard entry and the waterfall display for this QSO.

How We Built the GOES Reception Project Updated 12/1/18 Building our functional GOES 16 receiver was a process of broad web research and cobbling together the experiences of many other successful experimenters. We found lots of individual articles on antenna selection, software, and many other topics, but nothing that really pulled everything together. Hopefully this article will provide a comprehensive overview of our project. If you've found other tips that were useful or have questions or comments about the project, please leave them in the Comments box below and we'll try to reply when possible.  Thanks to the many experimenters whose work we copied and implemented in making this project work. Location (QTH) Our station is located at the "clubhouse" of the Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club, located in Mullica Hill New Jersey. The clubhouse provides a dedicated location for radio experimentation and radio operations, complete with a 100 foot tower for VHF...