Finally I had time and reasonable weather to have a go at receiving QO100 today. I know I can receive the satellite because I’ve used my GT Media V8 and managed to resolve the TV channels. No home for the dish yet so it lives in the workshop between fiddles.
Anyway, today was a bit of a comedy of errors but did result in success. First off, dish out, LNB in and aligned to the satellite. All good. I replaced the LNB with the POTY and got absolutely nothing on the V8. So I remembered I need the external 25MHz source so grabbed my Leo Bodnar GPSDO and the Windows laptop to make sure it was set up. Success, I can see the TV again.
Next was to set up the bias tee, PSU and cabling, the SDRPlay RSP2 and the SDR on the PC. After a bit of fiddling I did manage to see traces but I have yet to investigate the SDR software on Windows so it was off back indoors for the MacBook. Note to self: remember to learn how to use software before you need to actually use it!
The MacBook and CubicSDR proved the setup. I managed to decode a couple of SSB transmissions and decode the morse on the band edge beacon: “HI DE QO100 QRA DK0SB”.
Anyway, here is the lash-up. The signals were quite weak and clearly I need to do some adjustments yet but that really needs to wait until I fix the dish somewhere.
