Posts by DL1GNM

As far as I know BFR90/91 were discontinued log time ago. Probably only by Infineon (Siemens), so good to know there is stock easily available. Thank you.

Any recommendations for outdoor use? Heatsink etc. ...

I'm building my outdoor unit in a IP65 plastic box.

Thanks for the photo Mike.

73, Mike

Matthias great, thank you. I'll order soon. But I have no experience how to glue Teflon and PP together.

Perhaps anyone has a recommendation of an adhesive that is useable in this outdoor application.

73, Mike

Vintage design. But really nice. You still have some remainders of these old pancake transistors available? I should take a look into my drawer as well.

73s Mike

I could make a cut out of my DN 125 plug and put a teflon foil in front of my feed. We should discuss where to get a foil for me. See you soon.

73 Mike

OK. I'm just starting so I decided to use DN 125. Insertion loss is not zero. But not that much. I'll post pictures when the setup is ready.

73 Mike

I'll use a DN 125 tube as radom. So I'll have more space if I would use a DN 110 like Matthias suggested. But 117mm inner diameter could be not enough either?

Another thought about the BP2: what happens if only one of the mixer/PLL ICs is supplied? I never attached both outputs only one of them... ?!

Wobbling is extreme if you use the right output only, left one is much better but not good (view in direction dish).

Another dBW vs dish size table:

https://satlex.de/en/eirp_values_ku_band.html

and many more calculations on the site...

The picture of SDR console does not show the real true peak or value. That's the reason why I did the signal monitoring on the CW beacon. It's > 30dB S/N. Did not the same with the PSK beacon yet...

... to be done soon!

Quote

Maybe the wobbling on this LNB is caused by using only one xtal for 2 mixer/PLL ICs?

May be an idea. Did you cut away the second PLL/Mixer IC?

I disassembled one and tried it "open" at the POTY feed. SDR console was not able to track the PSK beacon then. It was windy btw. This I did not observe the the unopened ones.

My plan: It will be modified and an external LO will be used.

Any idea about the level I should apply because I've no datasheet for this PLL/Mixer IC.

73 Mike

UT5JCW: I worked him as my first sporadic-E contact on 144MHz, 1987-07-21. He is still active, nice so read!

Achim, I did. But the measurement tools that are included are too inaccurate (or I've not found the right one). Really not big changes. It's now at almost the same position as the old feed was.

Dish size:

Height: 129cm

Width: 120cm

Depth: 11cm

Distance: 91.5cm (middle of dish to patch)

F/D something around 0.68

I'll try another dielectric lens as soon I get one.

Did you expect more S/N?

Hello, setting up my QO-100 station. I've an unused 120cm offset dish that was installed in the early 90 for TV. I watched BBC on 28.2°E using this dish at last. And it has a polar mount but this is not moveably anymore (rust ...). It was quite easy to find the position by moving only 2 degrees west. BADR-4 on 12523 MHz H was found and helped me to align the dish to the required position.

I'm currently using the unmodified and a bit wobbling HD-BP2 LNB, POTY feed, RTL stick with SDR console and "autotune".

Noise floor is at -90dBm, the CW beacon around -58dBm. Temporarily mounted, see pictures...

Comments please. And more to follow soon.

73 Mike

The footprint shows me 45dBW for my location. The FlySat chart shows me in the middle column (NF 0.8-1.0 dB of the LNB) that a 100cm dish is OK. I've 120cm.

But TV signal was good.

Anyway, if you know the frequency of the transponder and the beacons just set elevation for your QTH and turn dish. You'll see an noise floor increase if you are using SDR console as receiver when position is right.

Hi, for me BADR-4, 12523H worked fine. But I'm located in JN38WB. In Finland the signal is much weaker.

Footprint here:

https://www.arabsat.com/english/the-fleet/badr-4

Dish size and dBW - I found a table here:

https://www.flysat.com/dish.php

73 Mike

Heiner, I know. Mine is not quite round. But I'll give it a try anyway.

I've tested the HD Line BP2 for some hours now after getting SDR Console running on my computer. I cannot say it wobbles. It does drift of course but beacon tracking enabled it's not really bad in unmodified condition.

To bring the Connor Winfield TCXO into this LNB is a problem of space. It's probably better to make a DC and TCXO injection from the shack.

I observed some rough SSB signals (with a slight aurora tone like on 28MHz/50MHz) when using a Voltcraft 12V switching supply for this LNB. But today I used an Mean Well switched power supply and it was OK. We will see...

By the way: has anybody adopted this not quite round waveguide to the POTY feed (

designed by Mike Willis G0MJW, Remco den Besten PA3FYM and Paul Marsh M0EYT)?

Hello everybody, I need help. SDR Console does start but does not work with my RTL dongle. I got it once running. But on another day it doesn't. I installed, reinstalled Zadig drivers (as user and as admin and so on), same with SDR Console. Cleaned Appdata path, registry ...

When I open SDR console, I can choose the device and Console starts. But no waterfall, no sound, nothing. When I close SDR Console, it does not close. I have to terminate it. It even crashes when I press the "stop" button.

Hardware is OK, CubicSDR works fine. What is going wrong here?

Good morning,

I do not understand the wobbling issue. Some LNBs do, some not, even using the same PLL chip/design. Then I read that the x-tal may cause this. Because these LNBs are very cheap the parts must be extreme cheap too...

When I stay at the original frequency (27 MHz for my HD LIne Black Premium) and replace the x-tal with the connor winfield analog TCXO that Heiner DD0KP (I think was it) recommended, then the frequency should be stable without wobbling...

What do you think?

73 Mike