I've been trying to build a DIY satellite system to receive images from a Korean geostationary weather satellite, GK-2A.
I bought the old mesh satellite dish from the guesthouse next door to me, then bought a nice metal ice bucket and fashioned that into a feed horn for the L-band (1.6 GHz) signal.
Next was to add a small low noise amplifier (LNA) to boost the signal, and then connect to my laptop software via the 'dongle' receiver. However, I found that the dongle got too hot and shut down when operating it to receive these L-band signals. So whip off the metal case and hack an old hair dryer fan to force-air cool it!.
The resulting image speaks for itself
Groping women when you're old is fine - everyone thinks you're senile
^ Damm it Simon, I can almost see myself in the backyard on my BBQ
Cooking, not sitting
David, I'm very happy with the images that I'm receiving. Worth the frustration and effort. Now to go and look for the GOES geo-weather-birds...
I thought Omen III was quite a popular movie. Clearly I was wrong.
An alignment of the stars in the Cassiopeia region of the night sky causes the generation of a 'superstar', described in the film as a second Star of Bethlehem. Thorn realizes it is a sign of the Second Coming of Christ and he orders all boys in England born on the morning of March 24, 1982 (the morning when, in the story, the Cassiopeia alignment occurred) to be killed in order to prevent the Christ-child's return to power.
^
Not just a soldering iron specialist, a heat dissipation dab hand, you topped the most "Practical Poster Poll" by utilising the Thai mandated blue pipe usage.
You rock.
Are the horn sides made from MAKRO extra thick, metal spray painted, plastic bin liners?
Did you by chance lay those patio tiles as well?
Last edited by OhOh; 19-12-2020 at 10:33 PM.
A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.
You may remember that there was a leak at the ISS and there was a slow loss of atmosphere. It was found after a long search and fixed. But now there is a fresh leak. Replacing the losses is now eating into the emergency reserves. Russia has a Progress cargo coming in February that carries oxygen. But the leak loses nitrogen too. Russia is considering asking NASA to deliver additional nitrogen on one of their cargo flights.
Expedition 64 Thread
A russian link.
На МКС заканчивается запас воздуха для восполнения утечки - РИА Новости, 19.12.2020
Part of my info is from a german forum that has some people very knowledgeable in russian space matters.
One may think that it may become a problem to operate the aging ISS for another 8 years.
But there is no acute danger for the astronauts and cosmonauts. The leak is still small. Even worst case capacity to evacuate everybody is available.
"don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence"
Lol, the horn is made of tin sheet - it's a bugger to work with since the edges are razor sharp. As for the blue pipe, my local hardware shop thinks I've replumbed half the village with the amount of pipe and fittings that I've bought.
THe patio is not my handiwork. Note the wide crack between a row of tiles. At some point, an extension was built onto this old Lao house, along the line of that crack. The house sits on a slope, and lack of foundations in the new build means that it is slowly sliding down the hill towards the septic tank pond, away from the rest of the house. There is about a 1 cm gap now between the old walls and the new. My bed sits in this new-build section.
Anyway, that's nowt to do with space news. To get you panting with excitement, here's my dongle receiver working at 1.42 GHz to receive energy spikes from hydrogen atoms in the cosmos. Note the cannibalised hair dryer fan to keep the dongle cool.
^I don't know. Think of the troublesome Apollo moon flight:
Your just the type of person they need.
Ability to think outside the box and able to deliver a solution with the available materials. You may find the cargo flight rocket a little tight. Also no local supplier of blue pipe.
I learnt my resourcefulness after living in Myanmar. The locals could build a moon-lander out of old junk, and it would probably work better then that from USA/Russia/CHina...
Conflicting infos about the ISS leak out of Roskosmos. Smacks of deliberate obfuscation to me.
There is no new leak.
Leak to be fixed before end of the year.
Materials to be delivered by February.
Make of it what you will.
US spy agency is also weird. SpaceX launched NROL-109 national security payload. Always very secretive. No pictures of the sat, understandable. But they tried to hide the satellite orbit data. Stopped reporting of the launch early, like they do every time, so we don't have precise data.
But it takes radio amateurs only less than 2 days to track the satellite and its orbit data. Also the same as always.
Interesting about this flight is that the NRO no longer insists on new rockets. This particular launch vehicle has flown 4 times before this launch. SpaceX even skipped some pre flight tests they used to do always before. Rocket reuse becomes normal. This flight ended with the fifth landing of the booster. It will fly again.
Hey Simon, what are you actually doing with these energy spikes from hydrogen atoms in the cosmos ? Recording them an putting them to music ? Someone did that with energy spikes from plants...
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1341088596598525952
Only 5 years and they already have launched as many reused rocket boosters as they have new ones over the whole existence of the company. By now the very large majority of all SpaceX launches is with previously flown boosters.First landing of an orbital class rocket booster was five years ago today
Commercial customers and the insurance companies have accepted reuse very quickly. Airforce and NASA took a little longer but they too accept it now.
Not exactly news, but 2 of these 18 will be the next man and first woman to walk on the moon.
Artemis Mission 2024.
My moolah's on Kjell and Kayla, unless there's some sort of rule that one of them has to be black, or gay, or trans-binary-gender-fluid or sumfing.
Not that I'm fascinated or truly champion the ideals of space exploration and discovery [especially the very distant outer reaches], but wouldn't be much more practical and moral to spend these grotesque sums of funds, energy and efforts to getting our shit together here on earth before expanding on programs of these related nature..?
Our priorities seem to be a bit askew.....as they appear to be consistently.
Just over $20 billion a year for NASA is a quite small part of the US budget. Much of it goes to exciting science projects. We can do a lot of things in parallel.
A real problem is Congress dictating how the money is spent in very much detail. Particularly obscene amounts of money for the SLS and Orion projects. Both not advancing spaceflight but feeding money to Boeing and Lockheed Martin for not delivering anything useful for over a decade now and continuing in the future.
Perhaps, unless China beats them to it
I've been researching the space projects that China is working on. I would place my $ on China leaving the USA far behind in space exploration in the coming years.
Never underestimate the Chinese, (and never believe a word that they say), unless it is "We will be the dominant nation on Earth in the future".
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