Greetings,
first of all - since this is my first posting here - let me introduce myself: I'm Yannick, 39 years old and my QTH is Saarbrücken in southwest germany near the german-french border.
I'm lincensed since august 2023 (class A since march 2024), but because i live in a flat and have no possiblities to put up large antennas for the short wave bands, QO-100 is a welcome opportunity to be QRV at home.
Another OM from our local club gave me a 85cm TV dish with an Megasat Diavolo Twin LNB for free and i have a Nooelec v5 SDR stick at hand. Not the ideal setup to start, but a point from where to improve step by step. Despite of the fact the LNB drifts like hell, i want to first improve reception before modifying for frequency stability. Unfortunately i may not put the dish on the balcony railing, so it sits on a tripod, but i don't think this will worsen the downlink.
The problem is: If i set the Nooelec stick to 0 dB gain, i get the middle beacon with not more than S4-S5 with SDR Console. Increasing gain seems not useful since the noise floor is also increased.
Since i have no reference, what is a typical signal strength of the middle beacon, if the dish is aligned correctly?
Many thanks in advance!
73,
Yannick - DK8YS