Posts by G8PJH

2E0ILY, no power train connected, the O/P of the Pluto is straight into the power meter. Just seems it is not being keyed.

Hello to all my amsat friends. I need help again please. I am now working on my QO 100 TX path. I am running Pluto with SDR console v3. I am monitoring the Pluto output with a Immersion RC power meter, I have a usb microphone plugged into my windows 10 PC. The SDR console TX panel is active, when I activate TX + tone, or tune, there is NO output showing on the meter. Do I have to do something to activate the Pluto? Thanks.

What external clock are you going to use?

Have you got yours running with an external clock?

Thanks, but can you explain a bit more, my software knowledge is very poor.

Hi there. Does anyone know how to toggle between the new external /internal clock on rev c/d? Thanks

Thanks

Does anyone know where to get a connector for the external clock input? Thanks

Thanks Jens !

Hi

Do I have to ground the PTT, or can I just use the VOX? Thanks!

Thanks for the advice, I have already made a POTY feed, purchased an Analog Devices CN0417 preamp, and ordered a 20W 2.4GHz amplifier from sg labs. So I just need a PLUTO now and we’re ready to start.

Starting work on TX. Anyone got any thoughts on which SDR transceiver is best (easiest!) to use, Pluto or Lime ?

Txs

Thanks Andrej!

73

Hi

Success! Just been listening to some QSO,s on QO 100! I had the dish elevation set completely wrong as mentioned earlier, the dish is now nearly vertical. Also I under estimated how a little adjustment makes such a big difference in signal strength. Just got to figure out what I’m looking at on SDR console now! Onwards and upwards to the TX side. Thanks again for everyone’s advice, I couldn’t have done it without you all.

73 Phil G8PJH

OK thanks, I’ll give it a go and see what happens. Thanks again for everyone’s help. I’ll hopefully report back with some good news!

73 Phil G8PJH

Many thanks gentlemen. Interesting about the elevation angle, probably where I was going wrong. I set the azimuth today using the sun. Made a boresite for the dish arm, at my location today at 10.28 the sun was at 149 degrees azimuth, so lined up the boresite with the sun, so the dish will now be pointing at the correct azimuth ?

Hi all,

My dish angle scale doesn’t make much sense, when the dish face is vertical, the scale is showing 26 deg. , and the offset arm is 7 deg, measured with an iPhone incline level. To set the QO 100 elevation, I set the dish face exactly vertical, placed a straight piece of timber across the top and bottom edge, then using the iPhone level moved the dish upwards to 26 degrees. Does that make sense? Thanks.

Phil

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, but still no luck. Thinking logically, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with the hardware, so all I can think off is the dish is pointing in the wrong place! Finding it difficult to locate QO 100, not finding it as easy as people make out.

Hi

Thanks for the feedback, as you might have guessed this is my first go at satellite. A question, why use Gqrx or SDR #? Can I not just tune around with SDR console? Also, exactly how sensitive does the dish pointing have to be? Is it just a dot in the sky, or is there a tolerance? Thanks again for the help, steep learning curve!

Quote from G8UGD

Hello Phil; I think that Ulrich is pointing you in the correct direction, the chances are that you are not on the correct receive frequency. But could be a good few hundred KHz off frequency.

I use a standard crystal controlled PLL LNB and it does not provide an accurate 9750MHz frequency, mine is around 9749.437MHz so just over 560KHz off and this will still drift over time and temperature.

Not sure if you are able to try Gqrx on a linux PC or if that would work on Windows, or even SDR# should be able to help you, wind the Sample rate out initially to 2400000 b/s to give yourself the widest receive spectrum and have a hunt around moving up and down in 500 KHz steps until you find it and then fine tune.

For example is is a current screen shot of mine centred on the middle beacon in Gqrx.

Once you find the middle beacon knowing that the centre frequency of it is 10489.750 you can then a calculate better the offset of your LNB and then use that within SDR console as your frequency off-set.

As I said this will change with temperature and sometimes quite quickly, SDR consoles needs to lock on to this to keep things stable.

Hope this helps get you going.

Another point give it a little more volts say 13.3 to 13.5 Volts to allow a bit of volt drop down the cable and through the bias T's. I thought the LNB's liked around 13 Volts?

Adrian

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