In the QO-100 (Es’hail 2) narrow band transponder, the recommendation for the adjustment of your downlink signal power is not to be stronger than the beacon. This was also the recommended usage of the old AO-40. Since the transponder has two beacons marking the transponder edges: a CW beacon marking the lower edge and a… Continue reading QO-100 beacons power
Results for "QO-100"
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Decoding the QO-100 beacon with gr-satellites
On February 14, the Amateur transponders on Es’hail 2 (which now has the AMSAT designation QO-100) were inaugurated. Since then, two beacons are being transmitted by the groundstation in Doha (Qatar) through the narrowband transponder. These beacons mark the edges of the transponder. The lower beacon is CW, while the upper beacon is a 400baud… Continue reading Decoding the QO-100 beacon with gr-satellites
Decoding the Artemis I Orion vehicle
On Wednesday 16th, the Artemis I mission was launched from Kennedy Space Center. This mission is the first (uncrewed) flight of the Orion Multi-Purpuse Crew Vehicle that will be used to return humans to the Moon in the next few years. Together with Orion, ten cubesats with missions to the Moon and beyond were also… Continue reading Decoding the Artemis I Orion vehicle
Using GSE and DVB-S2 for IP traffic
GSE (Generic Stream Encapsulation) is a protocol used to embed packets of almost any sort into the DVB data link layer. It can be used to send IP (IPv4 and IPv6) packets, Ethernet packets, etc. In my post about Blockstream Satellite, I talked about MPE, which is another way of sending IP traffic inside DVB.… Continue reading Using GSE and DVB-S2 for IP traffic
Trying to observe the Vega-C MEO cubesats
On July 13, the Vega-C maiden flight delivered the LARES-2 passive laser reflector satellite and the following six cubesats to a 5900 km MEO orbit: AstroBio Cubesat, Greencube, ALPHA, Trisat-R, MTCube-2, and CELESTA. This is the first time that cubesats have been put in a MEO orbit (see slide 8 in this presentation). The six… Continue reading Trying to observe the Vega-C MEO cubesats
Rain backscatter on 10 GHz
Yesterday we had a strong storm in Madrid at around 16:30 UTC. The storm was rather short but intense. Seeing the heavy rain, it occurred to me that I might be able to receive the 10 GHz beacon ED4YAE at Alto del León using my QO-100 groundstation (without moving the antenna). The 10 GHz beacon… Continue reading Rain backscatter on 10 GHz
More 10 GHz sun observations
Back in 2019, I took advantage of the autumn sun outage season of Es’hail 2 to make some observations as the sun passed in front of the fixed 1.2 metre offset dish I have to receive the QO-100 transponders. Using the data from those observations, I estimated the gain of the dish and the system… Continue reading More 10 GHz sun observations
Measuring the Allan deviation of a GPSDO with an SDR
A few days ago I tried to measure the QO-100 NB transponder LO stability using my DF9NP 10MHz GPSDO. It turned out that my GPSDO was less stable than the LO, so my measurements showed nothing about the QO-100 LO. Carlos Cabezas EB4FBZ has been kind enough to lend me a Vectron MD-011 GPSDO, which… Continue reading Measuring the Allan deviation of a GPSDO with an SDR
Using an external reference with the LimeSDR Mini
A while ago I spoke about feeding an external reference to the LimeSDR USB. Now I wanted to use an external reference with the LimeSDR Mini that I have in my QO-100 groundstation to lock all the system to GPS. Preferably I wanted to use 27MHz as the reference, since this is what I am… Continue reading Using an external reference with the LimeSDR Mini
Sun observations at 10GHz
Around October 9 it was the sun outage season for Es’hail 2 as seen from Madrid. This means that the sun passed behind Es’hail 2, so it was the perfect occasion to observe the sun with my QO-100 groundstation, which has a 1.2m offset dish antenna pointing to Es’hail 2. This is an account of… Continue reading Sun observations at 10GHz