Yesterday I tried a complete other #hydrogenline setup, different antenna, the Nooelec Sawhird H1 LNA and the #hackrfone SDR instead of my spectrum analyzer.

Result was good 😃 A clear peak at 1420.544MHz, about 40kHz Doppler shift, with a decent SNR.

I used ‘GQRX’ but found it a bit annoying to tune, it took quite a while before I got the picture you can see. I wanted to zoom much more, but couldn’t make it work.

So what SW do you use for radio astronomy?

Anyway, the signal passed the ‘double sanity check: 1) Disconnect power to the LNA: it goes away. 2) Rotate the antenna away from the Milkyway: it goes away - rotate back: it returns 😃

#hamradio #hamr #astronomy #stem #rfengineering #rfengineer #electronics

This book set is not cheap, I always wanted it, and now suddenly an opportunity came for me to place an order (and possibly have the bill covered for 😃)

The books cover all sorts of transmission and modulation schemes and provides detailed information on them all: application, how they look in time and frequency domain, etc.

If you’re into various sorts of radio monitoring, either professionally or on a hobbyist level, these books are really nice to have around 🙂 They’re not meant to be read from end to end, although you can certainly do so, merely they’re supposed to used as a handy signals-library 😎 📻 📡

In the world of radio monitoring or any kind of signal intelligence, there are two important quotes:

“Each signal is information”
(Roland Proesch)
“Information always adds”
(Robert T. Hill)

Get them at frequencymanager.de 👌🏻 📖

#radiomonitoring #sigint #hamradio #hamr #rfengineer #radiosystems #signalmonitoring #rdf

The LNA I mentioned in my previous post, well it’s a #Nooelec sawbird H-Line amplifier. About 41dB gain, centered around 1420MHz.

Look promising indeed 🙂

#radio #radioastronomy #RadioTelescope #rfengineering #rfengineer #hamr #hamradio

My living room as an antenna test chamber 😂 Well, it was a rainy day, couldn’t set it up outside.

I’m testing a 2.4GHz dish, meant for WiFi links, but as it turns out, it has a decent match at 1420MHz so it’s actually usable as a Hydrogen Line radio telescope antenna.

Traversing in front of it, you can see its impedance (S11 for the experts) change. This happens because I’m affecting its near field. In human understandable terms: being sufficiently close to the antenna affects how it performs.

With my newly acquired LNA, this will likely end up being a much more portable Hydrogen Line radio telescope, I have high expectations 😃

#hamr #hamradio #radio #radioastronomy #rfengineering #rfengineer #electronics #nanoVNA

A small walkthrough of my hydrogen line radio telescope, seen through an app which does a really cool AR overlay of the Milkyway.

What happens when I point the antenna to a vertical position, far away from the galaxy?
To things: 1) the 1420MHz signal disappears and 2) The noise floor drops several dB. Effectively this means at I’m picking up ground noise at this low view angle 👌🏻

#radiotelescope #astronomy #radioastronomy #rfengineer #rfengineering #hamradio #hamr #siglent #frequencyfriday

10 years back, I started experimenting, building my own radio telescope. My results, trying to observe the Galaxy hydrogen line at 1420MHz, were positive but in no way impressive.

Years have passed, I have better test equipment today, I have my own lab and I have a better antenna 🤓 📡

So I decided to give it a go last night - and it worked!

Not ideal a summer evening like this, the sky temperature is too high, and my observing angle too low, but at least I proved it possible, it’s a nice starting point 🙂🙂

My setup is a vintage 17dBi standard gain horn and a 38dB LNA, cooled about 20degrees below ambient. I feed this to my spectrum analyzer.

Next step will be to build a larger antenna and try again with when everything cools down in the fall 🙂

I really looked forward to share this - I hope you appreciate it 👌🏻☺️

#radiotelescope #astronomy #radioastronomy #rfengineer #rfengineering #hamradio #hamr #siglent #frequencyfriday

It’s #signalsaturday and here’s a mystery SW signal I picked up at my friends place 😃

5-15s bursts, centered at about 1.5MHz, total bandwidth 2MHz. Starts with carriers 4kHz apart, then spreads out to a noise field, which then goes back to single carriers.

Mostly present weekdays, signal is ‘local’ ie not observed on SDRs further away. No apparent timing of the bursts, occurrence seems ‘random’.

Either it’s 1) alien 👽 (joke) or 2) Some communications channel or 3) some kind of VFD 🤷🏼‍♂️
#hamradio #rfengineering #rfengineer #thetruthisoutthere

So how was your Friday evening? 🙂

I spent mine testing a HMC588 VCO module and a couple mixers: mission was to extend my measurement reach to cover x-band, aka 10ish GHz ☺️

After a quick DC test without the VCO board blowing up, I moved on to test two mixers: a ‘Magnum Microwave’ 4-12GHz and a LTC5549 based device, good to 14GHz.

All went well, those two peaks are at 10 and 11GHz so my spectrum analyzer extender setup works just fine 👍🏼🎯

#hamr #hamradio #electronics #rfengineer #electronicsengineering #siglent #ghz #highfrequency

Even though quite rudimentary when RF and electronics is your job/life/passion, sweeping a filter is always a pleasure 👌🏻☺️

This is a 10MHz band pass, meant to be used with reference frequency distribution 👍🏼

Running a square wave through it produces a beautiful sine 🥰

#rfengineer #electronicsengineering #testandmeasurement #siglent #hamr #hamradio

Damn, I mixed up the type number and now I’m the happy owner of an otherwise pristine FLANN 5.8-8GHz 20dB horn..
Oh and I need to find a WR-137 feed flange as well 🤷🏼‍♂️😂
So, inspiration needed, what’s going on in that frequency range, anything worth pursuing? 🤷🏼‍♂️🤔

#hamradio #hamr #rfengineer #radio #antenna #highfrequency #electronics #radioastronomy