Radio and rails...

As if I didn't already have sufficient Raspberry Pi systems around the house I set up one for SatNOGS (https://satnogs.org/). I already have a little LoRa device for TinyGS so why not add somehting else satellite-y? I mean, there was a spare port on the Cross Country Wireless multicoupler (and indeed there are still two spare ports now). Configuring it all was relatively straightforward although you do need to read the information on the wiki first. I am using an rtl-sdr V3 dongle which was sitting doing nothing so itis nice to actually use the thing. There is plenty of information on how to set things up and my station is running in test mode while I check it all out. With my compromised setup I did wonder if I would pick anything useful up but it does seem to. The results can be found at https://network.satnogs.org/observations/?station=4293 At the moment everything is spread about. The Pi needs boxing up and a place found on the shelf, pulus the USB and RF leads need tidying but otherwise it all seems to work ok. I have added a Minikits LNA to give a bit more oomph. When configuring the system you use…

The latest addition to the shack is this diminutive DX Patrol GPSDO v.3 that arrived today from the Amsat UK shop. I was looking for a general 10MHz source to replace the one I built from a kit that is rather deaf and came across the DX Patrol ones. At first I found one that was set to 10MHz with four outputs but fortunately the Amsat shop sells one with four independently configurable outputs. The advantage of that is I can use one of them for the QO100 setup (assuming I ever get that finished!) as well as having a general 10MHz output. Frequencies can be set from a built-in web front end and this is accessed directly via a built-in AP plus an in-screen QR code (handy!). Once connected you can then use the web interface to connect the GPSDO to your own wifi, which is what I have done. One of the displays tells you what IP address it has which is also handy when trying to find it. I have yet to connect the NMEA output to anything - the documentation details this and also the device can function as an NTP server so I might use…

Good copy of SAQ here this morning during their 100th annoversary broadcast at 09:00 UTC. The reception was via a YouLoop in the loft angled towards SAQ, an Airspy HF+ connected to the Mac via USB, and SDRpp on the Mac. The first picture is a screenshot with SAQ featuring, the display shifted and zoomed such that the 'loud' stations further up the band are out of the way. SDRpp has AGC turned off, bandwidth set to 200Hz and no attenuation. The morse was perfecly readable by ear. This second screenshot has the loud stations on screen as well as a comparison. There was a secod broadcast in the afternoon, with equally good reception but slightly more difficult on the ear.

Sadly I was unable to take any radio gear with me to Australia recently, so here is a picture of a tram! This particular tram runs around the CBD and is free to travel on. Melbourne is nice in that all trams within the CBD are free, with payment only necessary outsude that area. Payments are by Myki card which are used on touch pads in the trams. There is a cap on daily usage too, similar to the London Underground, where if you make two charged trips it then costs no more for that day no matter how many journeys you take. Trams otherwise are of course much more modern but keeping the older style tram for the circular route is a nice touch.

Background My Windows PC has a 4th generation i7 chip and will not take Windows 11. I am not about to run an unpatched Windows of any version nor am I prepared to upgrade a perfectly usable PC just so I can use W11 so I will need to dump Windows before the end of life date in October 2025. I counted 40 programs that I use, two of which are games so do not really count. Of the 38, only a few were hardcore Windows packages where there was no existing equivalent or anything similar enough. Some of the main ones had paid-for licenses, for example VARA and SatPC32 - somehow those need to work on Linux! I decided I would keep the two PCs even after one no longer ran Windows. It may seem odd to have two identical Linux systems but I find it convenient to have one PC for each of my HF rigs - even though wsjt-x, for example has profiles and can support several rigs that may not be the case with each bit of software that I use, and there may be items specific to each rig. The PCs are almost identical, both…