L-Band Setup

[spongella]

Happy Sunday to all.

Giving another try to L-band reception to possibly get the Outernet signal plus whatever else is on the L-band of interest. Not sure how well this setup will work, but have a homebrew L band helical antenna (wrong polarity though) and a 30 inch Ku dish. I hope with the gain of the dish and using an amplifier for the L band might work, not sure though. Definitely an experiment.

Have to figure which satellite (15.4W, 54W, or 98W) is the best for Outernet reception. Will try all three over the next few months. Weather is not conducive for bringing a laptop outside for dish aiming so will wait.

Anyone out there tried something similar? Most of my info is from UHF-satcom site. Thanks.

 

[mikelib]

Happy Sunday to all.

Giving another try to L-band reception to possibly get the Outernet signal plus whatever else is on the L-band of interest. Not sure how well this setup will work, but have a homebrew L band helical antenna (wrong polarity though) and a 30 inch Ku dish. I hope with the gain of the dish and using an amplifier for the L band might work, not sure though. Definitely an experiment.

Have to figure which satellite (15.4W, 54W, or 98W) is the best for Outernet reception. Will try all three over the next few months. Weather is not conducive for bringing a laptop outside for dish aiming so will wait.

Anyone out there tried something similar? Most of my info is from UHF-satcom site. Thanks.

Your most south point of the arc is 74s degrees, so 20 degrees SE of your most S point would put you around 54E degrees, 24 degrees SW of your most S point would put you at 98W. Since 98W is close to 97W, you might get interference from the many signals emitting from 97W. I guess 54W would be the first to try, if you had an unobstructed view of the SE sky. Good luck on the L band.

 

[spongella]

OK Mike, you are correct. I did hear that Outernet can also be gotten on 98.4W so that should be an easy find. Aiming the dish for L-band is a walk in the park compared to aiming for FTA satellites. Below is an interesting signal with many tones found on a few frequencies in the L-band. Just to make sure it is not a false signal I always disconnect the feedline to see if it remains or disappears. This signal is a bona fide one.

 

[mikelib]

OK Mike, you are correct. I did hear that Outernet can also be gotten on 98.4W so that should be an easy find. Aiming the dish for L-band is a walk in the park compared to aiming for FTA satellites. Below is an interesting signal with many tones found on a few frequencies in the L-band. Just to make sure it is not a false signal I always disconnect the feedline to see if it remains or disappears. This signal is a bona fide one.

Good Job, I see that you are not using SDR#, I have been having problems with SDR# lately, I have upgraded to the latest issues and I had download my SDRPlay driver and it would not place the SDRPlay in the pull down window. I had to write an add line to frontend.eml. That got it to work. My problem is I am trying to run window and Ubuntu on a 17 inch laptop, I was going to put all of my SDR radios on window side and use the Ubuntu for general computing. Well it was working great until I could not boot up windows. I have to wait for my son to visit and fix it for me. He says he a windows 10 boot disc.

Type to U later

 

[spongella]

Mike I did not use SDR# because HDSDR has an audio spectrum analyzer with a waterfall. SDR# does not, at least to my knowledge. Hope you get your laptop fixed, yeah I thought about using both Windows and Ubuntu on the same computer too but was too scared hi hi. I think you run Ubuntu as a virtual machine or something like that.

 

[mikelib]

Mike I did not use SDR# because HDSDR has an audio spectrum analyzer with a waterfall. SDR# does not, at least to my knowledge. Hope you get your laptop fixed, yeah I thought about using both Windows and Ubuntu on the same computer too but was too scared hi hi. I think you run Ubuntu as a virtual machine or something like that.

There is audio spectrum analyzer plugin for SDR#:

I had used the old one that they say no longer works http://www.rtl-sdr.com/sdrsharp-plugins/ cursor down to
Audio Waterfall Plugin

the new looks interesting and is new as October 1, 2016.
http://1420mhz.wixsite.com/website/...als-how-to-install-SDR-Audio-Waterfall-plugin

Let me know if you install it.

 

[spongella]

Will do, thanks Mike.

 

[River Patrol]

OK Mike, you are correct. I did hear that Outernet can also be gotten on 98.4W so that should be an easy find. Aiming the dish for L-band is a walk in the park compared to aiming for FTA satellites. Below is an interesting signal with many tones found on a few frequencies in the L-band. Just to make sure it is not a false signal I always disconnect the feedline to see if it remains or disappears. This signal is a bona fide one.

Very interested in your progress here as I recently started looking at L-Band Inmarsat satellites as well. Currently decoding AERO signals from 54W and 98W. I have also seen these MFSK signals and they are close to what I've seen for Inmarsat Standard-D signals which are used for pagers but I'm not sure as they aren't showing up on the same frequencies I have for Inmarsat.