Re: LF: Re: ORBITRON

[David Bowman <davidg0mrf@gmail.com>]

Hi Mal.

Sorry, the 2.4GHz TX is the hard bit.   No spares

I bought a 20 (or 25W) amplifier from a chap on ebay called Pyro Joe.  He is based in Florida and sells lots of surplus amplifiers.

I intend to use an old 2.4G to 70cm receive conveter reconfigured to up convert 70cms to 2.4G. As the 20W amp only needs a couple of milliwatts of drive, that should be fine.

However, this is a project for after the MF / LF season.  Having too much fun from the Oxfordshaire field to start on that yet.

For 10G RX I have a standard HDTV LNB by Octagon from Germany. They are PLL but drift a bit as the reference is a normal 27MHz crystal. I just swapped the 50ppm crystal for a TCXO from conner winfield. - Available from digikey.

HNY

David   CU on P4A

On Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 1:36 PM mal hamilton <g3kevmal@talktalk.net> wrote:

Hi David

Do have a spare 2Ghz TX. A simple CW tx would do me for the Eshail satellite. I have a 1.2M and a 1.8M dish already.

73 es HNY

 

De MAL/G3KEV

 

 

From: David Bowman

Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 5:14 PM

To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org

Subject: Re: LF: Re: ORBITRON

 

sorry for the off topic chat......

Mi Mal.

There is also a patch for Nova on Win 7.   I have it running on Win 7 64bit without issues although after about a year it all goes horribly wrong and I need to start again.

If you keep it running in the background (minimised) it is perfect.  You can update TLEs either automatically of from a text file when you select "manual update from file"

http://www.nlsa.com/

 

73

 

David

 

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 3:51 PM David Bowman <davidg0mrf@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Mal.

 

As it comes Orbitron or any other piece of software will have some TLEs loaded but these will be quite old.

To update you need a list of current space 'objects' and a set of TLEs that have been produced in the last week or 2.

 

You can either set the program to look at a particular place to load them automatically, or you can copy and paste into notepad etc

 

The current set of TLEs for amateur radio satellites can be found here:  https://www.amsat.org/tle/current/nasa.all

 

Regards

 

David

 

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 2:46 PM mal hamilton <g3kevmal@talktalk.net> wrote:

Tnx David for the reply. Orbitron TLE download does not include AO95 and more recent satellites.

Was wondering whether the download does not include latest launches or the Orbitron prog was not accepting the info

Will have to investigate further

 

 

de mal/g3kev

 

 

 

 

From: David Bowman

Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2018 10:19 PM

To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org

Subject: Re: LF: ORBITRON

 

Orbitron is still available.

However my favourite is Nova for Windows. www.nlsa.com. It's a bit old now but it has a nice map display and is free.

 

73 David

 

 

On Wed, 12 Dec 2018 19:57 Tobias DG3LV <DG3LV@gmx.net wrote:

Hi Mal !

ORBITRON (rev 3.71) is still working well, you can still download TLEs
and integrate new satellites, and I have no problems under Win7/64. Have
been using it from the start up to now.

Via the integrated DDE-software-interface I could let ORBITRON steer my
homebrew Sat-equipment (by use of homebrew software), while other
programs just integrated a few rotors and tranceivers. ORBITRON is still
free(Cardware).

> is there a better choice Maybe, depends on what you look for and what you are willing to pay for.

73 de dg3lv Tobias

Am 12.12.2018 um 17:38 schrieb mal hamilton:
> Does anyone know if ORBITRON satellite tracking still works or is there
> a better choice
> de mal/g3kev