Daily Archives: 2/8/2009

Adrien, VE3IAC shows me ClearDarkSky.com

While reading up on Adrien’s blog, he mentioned a site which I hadn’t seen before. It attempts to predict how good the conditions will be for astrononomy and astrophotography for locations around North America. For instance, I teach (well, more properly used to teach, since I’ve been enormously busy lately) telescope making at the Chabot Space and Science Center. Here’s the prediction for them:

As you can see, it’s not a particularly dark site, but the information is quite useful. Thanks for blogging about this Adrien!

VK6DI spots my MEPT beacon…

I just got mail from David, VK6DI. He’s reported spots of my WSPR beacon a few times in the last few days, and I’ve been trying to see if his grabber shows my MEPT beacon (the MV”). He sent me an email today, with the following screen grab:

moz-screenshot-952

Yep, that’s my beacon. Running an output power of about 2 watts into my low dipole (average height maybe an astounding 12 feet).

WSPR spots by state…

I’m up to spots from 33 states.

AK KL7OA
AL KU4PY, N4AU, W3PM, WA4KBD
AR
AZ
CA K1CT, K6JEY, K6LRG, KC6STJ, KF6I, KX6E, N6HA, N6SPP, N6TTO, N7HD, NN6RF, W6SZ, WA6PZB, WB9GHD
CO KD0BIK, N0LYI, N3DAK, W0AIR
CT
DE
FL AB7JK, W3HH, W5NYC
GA K4DD, K4MOG
HI KH7HJ
IA K0VM
ID
IL K3SIW, K9JKM, KA9LRZ, N9BPE, N9DSJ, N9GUE, WU9Q
IN NJ0U, W9HLY
KS K0FT
KY
LA
MA AA1A, KA1MDA, W1BW, W1XP
MD K1BZ, KD4IZ, N1SZ, W3CSW, WB3ANQ
ME
MI K8CT, K8NYY
MN AA0DX, N0AR, W0OHU
MO KC0TKS, KX6E, WB0WQS
MS KE5PRL
MT
NC WD4KPD
ND
NE
NH NS1E
NJ K1JT
NM N5JDT, N5RKD
NV AC7SM
NY K2LGJ, K2NV, W2KI
OH AJ8P, W7PP, W8LIW, WD8INF
OK
OR N7HD
PA
RI W5ESW
SC
SD K7RE
TN
TX AA5AM, KA5ULE, N5VP, WT5N
UT AD7HK
VA K4THE, N2JR
VT
WA K7RE, W1CDO, W7NBH, W7PP, W7RDP, WR5J
WI W9WLX, W9ZBD
WV
WY WY7USA

First Weather Picture from NOAA-19

Update: If you do a search for NOAA 19 on google, this blog post actually makes it to the front page. Some of you might be looking for information as to how you can listen for it. I use a Radio Shack Pro-60 scanner, tuned to 137.9125 Mhz, set in WFM mode, and my hand held antenna. I’ll try to make a video of my complete setup soon, and link it here… Now, back to the original posting.

Well, not really it’s first picture, but the first picture that I received. NOAA-19 is the last of the U.S. series that will transmit APT imagery, which is the simple analog format that I can receive using my super cheap setup. It’s also the satellite that was badly damaged during tested when the technicians failed to secure it before tilting it, resulting in millions in damage. It was finally launched on February 6th.

Anyway… here’s the picture, one of my better ones! It looks like both images are sending the same data here (I understand the satellite is still in testing mode).

noaa-19

Pass was recorded Feb 8, 2009, beginning around 21:18 UTC.

Addendum: Here’s the picture of the satellite accident.

2003-06-03_noaa-n_prime_anomaly

Adding a buffer amplifier to my crystal oscillator…

Today, I felt some compulsion to work on something radio related. A couple of weeks ago I build the crystal oscillator from Chapter 1 of Experimental Methods in Radio Frequency Design. I was lacking the necessary toroid to continue building the buffer amplifier, so I had ordered some from Doug Hendricks at qrpkits.com. They arrived a few days ago, so I really didn’t have any excuses to not just finish building the buffer amplifier.

To make a long story short, it appears to work! I’ll try to get some video/pics of it up here shortly. I did a pretty mediocre job of planning the layout, so the board looks pretty crufty, but it does work. Previously, I had tested it by attaching a clip lead to the base of the oscillator transistor. It sounded fairly loud in my FT-817, but the waveform sounded really squirrely. Now, when I clip in amplifier, it sounds really, really clean, even when I attach the clip lead to the output of the amp.

I haven’t had a chance to try to measure the output power yet, but it’s probably in the 10-15 mw range. The circuit in Chapter 1 includes a final class C amplifier stage, which is probably next on my list, along with a final harmonic output filter.

Addendum: If my calculations are correct, the output power is around 19mw (at least, to the precision of my crude RF wattmeter that I constructed).