Few more club (MX0MXO) eQSL cards

Raspberry pi 3 GQRX SDR radio and fun cube

Please also see our raspberry Pi-3 ready rolled image with latest 2.6 GQRX installed and supporting airspy dongle. Much more stable, click here for the download

I got given a funcube pro plus to play around with so I thought I would see if I could stretch the limits of my Raspberry pi-3 running Raspian Jessie. Well short answer is it works. for those of you who want to try install this here are is a step by step install guide.

<edit>

Following on form the comments below, You will need to increase the CPU speed from its default 700MHz,

Edit the config.txt file in the /boot/ directory and changed the arm_freq setting to:

arm_freq=1300

Save and reboot

</edit>

You could take the card back to your windows PC and edit config.txt with notepad (/boot is a fat32 partition and can be read in windows easily)

Now you can install the software

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

make sure you have expanded your SD card file system

sudo raspi-config (option 1) and then Finish (reboot now)

sudo apt-get install gnuradio gnuradio-dev

sudo apt-get install gr-osmosdr

sudo apt-get install gr-fcdproplus

sudo apt-get install gr-air-modes

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

sudo apt-get install libboost1.50-all

sudo apt-get install gqrx-sdr

This takes a little while especially libbost (20 minutes or more)

After all this I powered down the pi, inserted the funcube pro plus, (insert the rtl dongle or whichever) Now power back on

In the GUI (windows) open a terminal window and then type: sudo gqrx

This should on first run open a  config window, once the config is done click on save / close

Within a few seconds you should see the radio interface come up.

If you have any issues you may need to run this as root user, if it freezes hold control and tap c to return to a prompt (terminal window)

to become root type: sudo su

now just type: gqrx

Hopefully this will work for you, any issues let me know, please feel free to cpy and paste full errors

Have fun and enjoy

73

James / M0JFP

Dmr lunch in Chertsey

Bob M6FLT up on the hill /P

More eqsl cards

MX0MXO portable in laleham park.

On Saturday evening MX0MXO was back on the air again from Laleham park.


         

We experimented tonight in building an inverted Vee antenna
We used a 10 meter telescopic pole, tied the balun to the top and too 2 wires down either side.



Running between 50 and 100 Watts, results were very good.
Working into the USA on 40, 20, 17 and 15 meter bands.
We worked Scotland on 80 meters
We also had good results around Europe and Russia.





Essential evening supplies

ISS to Powys Secondary Schools, Mid Wales, UK

My recording

Echolink AMSAT audio

• A direct contact with students at Powys Secondary Schools, Mid Wales, UK is scheduled for Sat 2016-03-0510:55:19 UTC 59 deg.The scheduled astronaut is Timothy Peake, KG5BVI.

         ​Please join us in listening to the contact:         - Audio from this contact will be fed into EchoLink *AMSAT* (101377) and IRLP Node 9010 Discovery Reflector
         - Streaming audio will be available at: https://sites.google.com/site/arissaudio/         - Watch the contact live at:  https://principia.ariss.org/Live/ 
Audio on Echolink and web stream is generally transmitted around 20 minutes prior to the contact taking place so that you can hear some of the preparation that occurs. IRLP will begin just prior to the ground station call to the ISS. Please note that on Echolink there are automatic breaks of 1.5 seconds in the audio transmission. These occur every 2.5 minutes during the event. Breaks on IRLP are manual and occur approximately after every third question.

​Powys Combined Schools represent all secondary schools across the county of Powys in Wales. With students from over 90 primary schools and 12 secondary schools, we represent students from the age of 4 up to 18. As Powys Combined Schools, we have a pool of some 7,700 students aged 11-18 and a similar number of 4-11 year olds in the primary schools.

​Our goal is be to leverage our existing relationships with the primaries in each secondary catchment area to organise a county wide event over the months leading up to the ARISS contact. During which time workshops, projects and activities aimed around STEM subjects would be run.

Powys covers the historic counties of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, most of Brecknockshire (Breconshire), and a small part of Denbighshire — an area of 5,179 km² or 2,000 sq miles, making it the largest county in Wales by land area. Most of Powys is mountainous, with north-south transport being difficult.

The majority of the Powys population lives in villages and small towns. The largest towns are Newtown, Ystradgynlais, Brecon, and Welshpool. Powys has the lowest population density of all the principal areas of Wales.

Just under a third of the residents have Welsh linguistic skills: Welsh speakers are concentrated mainly in the rural areas both in and around Machynlleth, Llanfyllin and Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant (where William Morgan first translated the whole Bible into Welsh in 1588) in Montgomeryshire (Welsh: Sir Drefaldwyn), and the industrial area of Ystradgynlais in the extreme south-west of Brecknockshire (Welsh: Sir Frycheiniog).

Weather Satellites NOAA 15, 18 and 19

I used the software called wxtoimg (free) http://www.wxtoimg.com/



I hooked up my ft8900 via a usb sound card dongle. I used the free version of HRD to track the satellites. The results prove that there is something up there sending weather pictures, just that my reception was not so great.

I am told I need wider bandwidth to get clearer pictures, so when the funcube dongle arrives I will try again and publish the results.






The above is the best picture I could get, results varied over the days and different passes.
WXTOIMG software, you need to update the keplars, and when you put it into auto record mode it will tell you the time and the frequency of the next pass.