Diana Eng: Catching satellites on ham radio
Diana Eng, our all-time favorite contestant on Project Runway, is writing a series of how-to articles for Make Online about HAM radio, which is one of her passions.
My favorite ham activity is making contacts via satellites. Not only is there the romantic notion of sending messages into outer space, but you have to trace the orbit of the satellite with your antenna while tuning the radio, to compensate for the Doppler effect.Catching satellites on ham radioThe satellites AO-51, SO-50, and AO-27 orbit the Earth acting as repeaters. Repeaters are automated relay stations that allow hams to send signals over a greater distance using low-power hand held transceivers. The satellites allow hams to relay messages from Earth to space and back to other hams somewhere on the planet. The International Space Station (ISS) also has a repeater, but occasionally, if you're lucky, the astronauts turn on their radios to make contact directly with hams on the ground.
The following instructions will get you started listening to birds (satellites) on FM, which can be done with a simple VHF/UHF FM radio with a whip antenna, without the need of a ham license. For better coverage, you can use a Yagi antenna (like the one pictured above) connected to a mutli-mode radio and a license (if you want to transmit). A Yagi antenna can also be used to improve the signal of your hand held radio.
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HAM isn't an acronym! It's "Ham Radio"
True dat.
I often bounced digital packets through the ISS repeater, but it took a while before I was lucky enough to make voice-contact with an on-board astronaut.
A while back AO-40 offered *long* visibility periods with many conversation over a large footprint, but required equipment that listened in S-band for the downlink: not everybody was ready to hack that up. It also suffered somewhat from earthbound interference due to unlicensed Type-15 WiFi equipment; fortunately directional antennas nulled most of that out.
An unfortunate error in launch prep for the engine on-board AO-40 resulted in loss of much of the equipment on board, yet it remained operational in a limited fashion until a battery failed to a shorted condition. Optimists hope the shorted cell may open someday; this is not unprecidented and actually happened on AO-13.
73 de K3XS @MaggieL, who probably won't get disemvowelled this time.
Ham on it!
More ear plugs than you can shake a stick at.
What a great photo. I'm in Ham-nerd love.
Also, I always feel a bit badly for Uda when I see mention of a Yagi antenna. There's some effort now to refer to it as a Yagi-Uda antenna, but the name's probably stuck now. Basically, Uda came up with the initial idea. Two years later, Yagi helped to improve the design somewhat, but more importantly published the first description of the design in English. He never sought to usurp Uda's design, but the name Yagi stuck because it was on the paper westerners were reading.
"Diana Eng and I are getting old and we still haven't walked in the glow of each others majestic presence, listen Diana, hear my words, they're the words you would think I would say if there was a me for you."
I think this girl has just given me a ham radio asian chick fetish... Does anyone else think she's super cute in that first picture?
No... Just me? Oh...
Diana is smart, cute, and has 100% nerd credentials, I'm in love.
@ #6 FTW with the TMBG ref - that's awesome.
and yes, I agree she is quite lovely! As I always remind my daughter - smart chicks rule!
Papiermeister
KB7BLJ
Brooklyn Heights Promenade, nice.
Oh, God, I bet she can solder too. Can we get a video of that?
until now, but yes, I realize it... there actually is a market for hot young women in lingerie soldering circuit boards.
Ahem.
Me, me, me ...
Satellites gone
Up to the skies
Thing like that drive me
Out of my mind
I watched it for a little while
I like to watch things on tv
Satellite of love
Satellite of love
Satellite of love
Sat tell lite of . . .
Ok, hit it, yall!
I can't figure out what the Doppler effect has to do with anything here. Can someone explain?
/me adds falsetto *pom-pom-pom*s between Strangefriend's chorus lines.
Sure- think of it this way- half of the "pass" above you, the satellite is moving toward you, and half away from you. Just like a train whistle, the frequency of the transmission varies.
In this case, you must adjust the uplink and downlink freqs to compensate. It is usually easy enough to do manually.
Keep in mind these sats are not geostationary.
-n9ybx
I wonder if she got harassed by the police for carrying around that menacing contraption.
she risks being arrested for "terrorism", by some stupid cop; and she'll have a hard time explaining these antennas
Dear Dianna,
You continue to impress us! Congratulations and keep up the excellent work/loves of YOUR life!
One Love,
Dirty South TV
She won't have problems explaining the antenna - she's got a license for it. In NYC, whatever it is is acceptable *if you have a license*... ;)
Photography comes to mind as the corolary here, although it would probably be termed a "pass" rather than a license, but the point is that it derives from some authoritarian sanction of the activity.
:D
Thanks anonymous #16. I was thrown by the comma -- I read the sentence to mean that she was tracing the orbit to compensate for the doppler effect. Of course, it makes sense now: she has to continuously adjust the tuning frequency as the component of the satellite's motion toward/away from her will be continuously changing.
This also inspired me to poke around some on wikipedia, so now I finally understand what 'satellite eclipse' means. (It's mentioned under observations/satellite on this weather site http://www.cwb.gov.tw/eng/index.htm , but with no explanation, at least not in English.)
I learned a lot here today! Thanks!