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Author Topic: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites  (Read 331 times)

DIESTIMME

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Hey All,

I'm new to all of this. Looking for a good indoor beginner setup for scanning and listening to satellites and VHF/UHF frequencies. I have found a few on Amazon which are fairly cheap, but I'm not sure if they are what I'm looking for. I live in a fairly small town and want something with quite a bit of range. I am not licensed yet, but will be working on that, so transmitting I will not do for awhile. I would eventually want to add transmitting abilities to my setup later. Any ideas of where to start would be great! Like I said, I'm brand new to this.

Thank you so much for taking to time to read and respond!
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K6LCS

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2021, 10:34:37 PM »

Basic scanners that receive amateur radio frequencies CAN be used ... Build yourself a better antenna, though, for best results.

Antenna projects that are fun and effective in the ANTENNAS page at ...

http://www.work-sat.com

And frequencies for the ISS and easily heard satellites - as well as info on knowing WHEN they will be above YOU - also on that site!

But how abut getting your amateur radio license ... then you can ACCESS these satellites!

http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed

Clint K6LCS
909-999-SATS
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Clint Bradford, K6LCS
AMSAT Ambassador, ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator
http://www.work-sat.com
909-999-SATS

DIESTIMME

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2021, 11:26:43 PM »

Thank you K6LCS!

That is very useful information. Might you have a link to a good scanner that I could start out with? I've already done a little research to upgrade the antenna. Just have to decide which route I want to go with that. I'm just looking for an all around good scanner to start out with. I've been looking at the Uniden Beartracker ones.

Like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-BearTracker-BCT15X-TrunkTracker-Location-Based/dp/B002IT1C8U/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=uniden+receiver&qid=1609917875&sr=8-8

And this... https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-BCD996P2-TrunkTracker-Dynamically-Location-Based/dp/B00UJU5MUE/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=uniden+receiver&qid=1609917918&sr=8-10

The analog is much more in my price range if I can get away with using that.

What are your thoughts??

Thank you!
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G4AON

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2021, 03:57:31 AM »

A scanner is fairly limited in terms of use in a ham radio setup. More useful, and less expensive, is an SDR type receiver. For example the RSP series of receivers cover 1 KHz to 2 GHz and can be used as test equipment (spectrum analyser software is free), scanner for analogue FM, spectrum display hooked up to your transceiver showing DX Cluster spots on the spectrum, etc. They can decode digital audio, but only with 3rd party software. Best of all is the low cost!

I use an RSPdx, but for half the price an RSP1a works pretty much the same.
https://www.sdrplay.com/

For a "how to do it" list of using an RSP receiver to receive NAVTEXT, WEFAX and a lot of other stuff, see:
https://www.sdrplay.com/apps-catalogue/

The RSP1a is $119.95 and the RSPdx is $199.95 from Ham Radio Outlet https://www.hamradio.com/ (assuming you are in the USA).

73 Dave

« Last Edit: January 06, 2021, 04:01:51 AM by G4AON »
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K6LCS

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2021, 07:48:04 AM »

You need to find out if there is much in your region for a scanner to receive.

I mean, a lot of public service entities have gone to encrypted comms - which are not decipherable with consumer equipment.

SDR dongles are really fun! When running one of mine, I have a second monitor dedicated to it in the home office. There are "counterfeit" crapola out there - a lot of bad ones on ebay. Here is a trusted site ...

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/

SO ... A little bit of homework on your end - to see what there is to "hear" in your region - will point you to a couple solutions!

Clint K6LCS

 
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Clint Bradford, K6LCS
AMSAT Ambassador, ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator
http://www.work-sat.com
909-999-SATS

W9IQ

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2021, 08:23:18 AM »

What would be nice is to have a straight forward table of transmit and receive link budgets at various elevations for each of the satellites so that the potential for success with a given receiver (or transmitter) and antenna system could be easily calculated. Better yet would be a link budget calculator that would spit out the results.

- Glenn W9IQ
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- Glenn W9IQ

God runs electromagnetics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the wave theory and the devil runs it on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday by the Quantum theory.

K6LCS

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2021, 08:54:45 AM »

What would be nice is to have a straight forward table of transmit and receive link budgets at various elevations for each of the satellites so that the potential for success with a given receiver (or transmitter) and antenna system could be easily calculated. Better yet would be a link budget calculator that would spit out the results.

- Glenn W9IQ

Wow ... you sound like an engineer - so you may not like my answer (grin).

The FM Voice LEO satellites with 2M downlinks (including the ISS) are VERY easy to HEAR with minimal equipment: Many hear them with stock antennas on their HTs.

There are even hams who are successfully working them with stock HT antennas - but that is, of course, not the preferred method: You really want some gain in your antenna system.

Satellite SO-50 and its 436.795-ish downlink really require an upgraded antenna to hear well.

When working the FM LEOs, Doppler accommodation is required on the 440 side of comms, since that frequency can deviate as much as +/- 10kHZ on a decent pass. The same pass only has about a +/- 3kHZ deviation on 2M.

Frequency chart for the "easy" sats is published at www.work-sat.com - including the ISS' SSTV, crosswind repeater, and 2M FM voice pairs.

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Clint Bradford, K6LCS
AMSAT Ambassador, ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator
http://www.work-sat.com
909-999-SATS

W6QW

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2021, 11:00:45 AM »

There has been lot's of work done on the doppler-shift algorithms for LEO.  Implementing algorithms into a database would be easy to do and will inevitably become commonplace in automatic amateur satellite equipment frequency tracking.  Here's an example of some of that work:

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1659&context=smallsat
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K6LCS

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #8 on: January 06, 2021, 11:57:48 AM »

I understand the theory and algorithms ...

But in the real world, a ham who merely turns a VFO tuning dial slightly upwards (from 436.795 to 436.800, for example) is successfully working the satellite.

I know it's rocket science ... But the FM voice LEOs are very easy to work - and really do not require mew to find my slide rule to work ... (g)

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Clint Bradford, K6LCS
AMSAT Ambassador, ARRL Affiliated Club Coordinator
http://www.work-sat.com
909-999-SATS

W9IQ

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2021, 12:24:45 PM »

There has been lot's of work done on the doppler-shift algorithms for LEO.  Implementing algorithms into a database would be easy to do and will inevitably become commonplace in automatic amateur satellite equipment frequency tracking.  Here's an example of some of that work:

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1659&context=smallsat

Tracking programs like SatPC32 already do this automatically through the CAT control for those radios that provide such an interface. You can choose correction of the uplink, downlink or both.

- Glenn W9IQ
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- Glenn W9IQ

God runs electromagnetics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the wave theory and the devil runs it on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday by the Quantum theory.

VE3WGO

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2021, 12:29:53 PM »

What would be nice is to have a straight forward table of transmit and receive link budgets at various elevations for each of the satellites so that the potential for success with a given receiver (or transmitter) and antenna system could be easily calculated. Better yet would be a link budget calculator that would spit out the results.

- Glenn W9IQ

Yes, in the days of Martin Davidoff's Satellite Experimenter's Handbook and his Satellite Handbook, some of this link budget math was done for the main satellites, so that hams could do a little bit of thinking and experimenting of what it takes to use them.  It was even shown in the ARRL handbooks of the day, and it's not hard math.  It just needs transponder and orbit info from the satellite owners.  Over on the Amsat-UK page are some really interesting spreadsheet tools from Jan King (VK4GEY/W3GEY) at http://www.amsatuk.me.uk/iaru/spreadsheet.htm.  Although they are a bit old, I think these files still work on recent MS Office and Windows OS's.

As far as LEO FM sats being almost trivially easy it's true.  But there are very many more active linear and digital sats than FM sats due to worldwide interest in launching and working them, and experimenting with antenna and signal processing technologies. 

So, I agree that linear and digital sats do have some flexibility in link budgets and base station configurations which would be very interesting to see analyzed and compared.

73, Ed
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W9IQ

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2021, 12:31:54 PM »

There are even hams who are successfully working them with stock HT antennas - but that is, of course, not the preferred method: You really want some gain in your antenna system.

The stock HT antenna works to a limited extent during overhead passes. But you eliminate the uncertainty of "you really want some gain in your antenna system" by doing a simple link budget calculation. This applies to the OP's receive only question as well as to the ham that wants to make satellite QSOs.

This is such a fundamental issue, I have always been surprised that AMSAT NA has not taken on this project. An on-line calculator would make it simple for the "non-engineers" to take advantage of the information.

- Glenn W9IQ
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- Glenn W9IQ

God runs electromagnetics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the wave theory and the devil runs it on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday by the Quantum theory.

W9IQ

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2021, 12:36:14 PM »

Yes, in the days of Martin Davidoff's Satellite Experimenter's Handbook and his Satellite Handbook, some of this link budget math was done for the main satellites, so that hams could do a little bit of thinking and experimenting of what it takes to use them.  It was even shown in the ARRL handbooks of the day, and it's not hard math.  It just needs transponder and orbit info from the satellite owners.

I agree, Ed. With the ready availability of on-line Keplerian elements, it should be a straight forward exercise for AMSAT to offer an up-to-date link budget calculator. It could even host a database of commonly used transceivers to determine RX sensitivity and TX power to show the minimum required antenna system gain which it could then relate to the commonly used antennas.

- Glenn W9IQ
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- Glenn W9IQ

God runs electromagnetics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the wave theory and the devil runs it on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday by the Quantum theory.

DIESTIMME

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Re: Looking for a good starter scanner and setup to listen to satellites
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2021, 04:10:59 PM »

A scanner is fairly limited in terms of use in a ham radio setup. More useful, and less expensive, is an SDR type receiver. For example the RSP series of receivers cover 1 KHz to 2 GHz and can be used as test equipment (spectrum analyser software is free), scanner for analogue FM, spectrum display hooked up to your transceiver showing DX Cluster spots on the spectrum, etc. They can decode digital audio, but only with 3rd party software. Best of all is the low cost!

I use an RSPdx, but for half the price an RSP1a works pretty much the same.
https://www.sdrplay.com/

For a "how to do it" list of using an RSP receiver to receive NAVTEXT, WEFAX and a lot of other stuff, see:
https://www.sdrplay.com/apps-catalogue/

The RSP1a is $119.95 and the RSPdx is $199.95 from Ham Radio Outlet https://www.hamradio.com/ (assuming you are in the USA).

73 Dave

Thanks for the info on the SDR. I had seen a little info on them but hadn't really looked into them. I'm thinking this would be perfect for me to play around with and see what I can pick up. And for the price, can't beat its functionality!

My one question is, what would be the best type of antenna to hook up to this? I'm not looking for something huge since we are renting our home. Just something that is decent and easy to set up that will work with this unit.

Thanks again!

Matthew
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