g7kse.co.uk

Project Scope

A perfect antenna set up is not going to happen for a lot of people and I include myself in that sizeable group. So as I’m never going to have a cheque book big enough to buy a super rig or QTH for that matter I prefer to operate in a more lightweight manner. Simple antenna systems with mobile or portable rigs and antennas, sometimes from home or more often that not from a different place altogether.

Until I started this project I had never worked a satellite but own an FT817, VX8 and IC7000 as well as a SOTAbeams SB270 antenna. A simple shack but more than enough to work a few satellites. Yes, you can easily work satellites using all this and some dexterity I wanted to build a simple antenna rotator that could be plugged into Ham Radio Deluxe running off a simple netbook. This would allow me to pack it all up, take it to wherever I wanted and operate with a bit of comfort.

The basic block diagram below shows the idea of the project with the rotator being mainly a hardware element, the rotator controller being based on an Arduino (ATMega328 microprocessor) and the netbook doing the clever pointing bit.

Where am I now?

August 2011 – Completed some elementary research and started to look at the Arduino platform with a view to getting familiar with the platform and the issues related to the project.

December 2011 – I’ve been playing about with the SOTAbeams antenna with the FT817 with satellites that I can work from home and it seems to be fairly successful. Even without a duplexer. I’ll spend a bit more time on the Arduino platform and Googling about to see what’s been done already.

February 2012 – After a bit of a learning experience with the Arduino and my MSF receiver project I’ve started designing the hardware for this. Its been a while since I’ve used Solidworks and to say I’m rusty is a bit of an understatement. I think I’ll be on a steep curve to start with.