Sunday, October 11, 2020

QO-100 thoughts

The humble listener/follower of my station or posts might have experienced a certain lack of enthusiasm about operating on QO-100/ Please do not interpret much into this. The satellite is great. Probably the greatest any Oscars had ever been by this date.
However, once the setup is done, the fine tuning is somewhat frustrating.

What to look for?

Ideally, in my world, one would be going fully analogue, i.e. using only pure receivers and transmitters.
Does that justify the effort by the operators of the satellite? I don't think so!
Hence, we also should look into modern techniques, such as SDR.

Well, this is exactly the spot I am struggling with. I got the equipment for both, analogue down link and digital down link. I operated with the satellite using both. Concerning the up link, I an analogue only. 

What I used so far (RX - TX):

  • RSP1a - FT817
  • FT290R2 - FT790R2
  • FT736R (RX+TX)
Any of the setups has advantages and disadvantages. 

For the time being, I am using the RSP1a - FT817 the most. However, I have a strong desire to move towards using the FT736R only.