Es'hail-2 Ground Station

From BATC Wiki
Revision as of 20:30, 5 September 2018 by M0DNY (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The Es'hail-2 spectrum monitor has been installed at Goonhilly Earth Station, but is awaiting completion of the network connection before the installation is operational.

The dish has been pointed at 26 degrees East (the planned Es'hail-2 location) and tested by receiving signals from BADR-4.

https://eshail.batc.org.uk/

RF

The hardware consists of a 1.3 Metre dish with a dual LNB. The separate horizontal and vertical feeds go to 2 Airspys which are connected to a Linux server.

Roof2.jpg

The indoor LNB Power Unit has been constructed:

FrontPanel2.jpg

MainTray2.jpg

RearPanel2.jpg

The GPS reference is a Leo Bodnar unit programmed to produced 10 MHz (for the Airspys) and 25 MHz (for the LNB, but not implemented yet). The settings for the reference to produce these 2 frequencies were not straightforward (as the 2 outputs on the Leo Bodnar unit need to be linked) but are here for reference:

GPS Screenshot.jpg

Server

Hardware

i7-2600 CPU
16GB DDR3 RAM
Intel DQ67SW Motherboard
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD
750W Corsair TX Power Supply

Software

Ubuntu Server 18.04
Nginx mainline
airspy_tcp fork (source)
narrowband WebSDR by PA3FWM (homepage)
wideband spectrum monitor (source coming soon)

Network

TBC

Installation

The equipment has been placed on a bench in our allocated room (with AMSAT-UK's funcube receiver).

Bench2.jpg