Haha I’m jealous! I wish I could hang out daily there too! Although with remote stations soon being a possibility in the UK (I have a UK license - M0RAJ) I may be able to do something if I can convince a friend. 🤔

Looks like it's a clear window from Israel! Too bad there is no amateur satellite link to reach N America via QO100. 😞

I want to go to Brazil and operate QO100. It’s on my list. Depends on money and vacation time.

Thanks!

For sure!

Thank you! Yes I want to see what I can do next. Looking for parts for my own setup.

But I bet none like this one!

@@n2rj That is true!

Welcome aboard!

It’s actually Clarke Belt named for science and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke who figured out the special feature of that orbit.

I mentioned that in the video. :)

@@n2rj I am sorry I must have missed it

@@n2rj I went to signal hill once but due to renovations the hamshack was closed. Maybe an excuse to go operate there :)

@@CanuckHam14:16

@@n2rj Yeah you totally said it too, my bad I totally missed it first time around :)

The narrow transponder is a linear transponder with 500KHz bandwidth and accommodates narrow band modes and SSB. It also has a wider 8MHz transponder for digital amateur TV.

@@n2rj nice. Thank you

We already have services like Apple’s SOS and Garmin inreach for emcomm. Since backpackers travel light this would have limited purpose for them.

Yes, there have been several "vacation style DXpeditions" by people who essentially carry their equipment as personal travel luggage. If desired, one can usually buy TV sat dishes very cheaply on the local market, and leave it there. That reduces the required equipment to a very small box. There also have been experiments without a dish (only using a bare LNB and a small 2.4GHz antenna) and it works for digital modes and CW. For emergency communications it would be a bit bulky and maybe unreliable (what if you cannot contact someone who can assist you?), but for /P amateur radio it is very usable.

@Rob2 exactly. Also not everything in ham radio has to be about emcomm first. Emcomm is something that happens BECAUSE we do amateur radio. It should never be our first goal. Otherwise you’ll have where regulators will say that they should just issue privileges for emergency only. The FCC seems to be toying with that idea based on some of its recent rulemaking proposals.

There is a desire to do so. It would very likely be piggybacked on a commercial satellite. QO-100 is using a spare transponder on a direct to home TV bird.

@@n2rj Well yes, but unfortunately it is not like a transponder on any direct to home TV sat could be re-programmed to do that... It indeed is a special transponder made by the manufacturer of the satellite, and it uses power amplifiers (TWT) from the TV sat itself, but the remainder of the transponder is a special-purpose custom build. To have that with cross links would require yet more custom hardware, which of course cannot be added to QO-100 anymore. I think more realistic in case of more than one geostationary satellite is to have a special groundstation that is in the coverage area overlap, and that re-uplinks signals received in part of the downlink band. Of course it would increase the delay even more.

@@Rob2 right. I meant for a future launch, not any current satellite in orbit.

@@n2rj I think it is sufficiently difficult to get amateur radio transponders included on commercial satellites to rule out the possibility that there will be crosslinks. Remember the satellites would have to be 120deg apart in orbit, so they will be in 3 different regions (europe/africa, americas, australasia). They would thus likely be operated by different companies, and getting those to crosslink between their satellites would be very difficult. No, "we" should focus on getting actual amateur radio transponders on geosats (and be quick with that, as in my opinion the current crop of direct to home geostationary TV satellites being built and launched may well be the last!), and when we want crosslinks we should build them on the ground. (e.g. in Brazil for a link between QO-100 and a similar sat placed over the americas)

@Rob2 I wasn’t talking about cross links. I was talking about a QO-100 style transponder on a sat that has a footprint on the Americas and possibly either Asia pacific or Western Europe. I doubt ham radio by itself could fund a dedicated geostationary satellite.

Sure let’s talk to some billionaires to loan us a transponder. :)

@@n2rj maybe that isnt a bad idea. that space x factory from elon musk uses reusable rockets to take satelites into outter space quite frequently. that guy even launched one of his EVs into outter space for fun. why wouldnt he do same with an amateurradio satelite ? worst thing that can happen is that they would say _no_ or dont say anything. that would be wondefull to have one more geostationary amateurradio satelite.

it will come

It is not required to use sophisticated equipment on QO-100, because the dynamic range is very small. All the stations are targeting a signal level equal to the beacon, so in practice all signals are the same level. And the typical receiver setup (as shown in the video) is good enough to receive the transponder noise floor. Beyond that, there is no performance that can be gained. It works perfectly well with a Pluto or e.g. an RTL SDR stick, an SDR Play, etc. Remember receive is downconverted by the LNB. Usually an LNB with 9.75 GHz LO is used resulting in an IF of 739 MHz coming down the cable, well within the range of any cheap SDR. Uplink at 2.4 GHz is a little more difficult, but transmit converters that operate from 432 MHz are available. The Pluto of course generates it directly.

Elsewhere in the shack they have one of their transceivers. They also have an icom. I have another video with it. You’re more than welcome to link the videos in zero retries if you wish :)

BSG Funk DL0RUS is free time activity group of R&S employees at the Munich campus. So we used some professional R&S gear to verify our build, but we try to keep the groups activity on a hobbyist budget. We are thankful for the radio room and the donations by various supporters. 73 DL1XMW

ARRL wouldn’t do it. I would rather have amsat and ARISS manage it.

10GHz down and 2.4ghz up