The geostationary satellite Es’hail-2 carrying amateur radio transponders launched from Kennedy Space Center at 20:46 GMT on Thursday, November 15, 2018 and is now in a geostationary orbit at 25.9° East.
These are the first amateur radio transponders to be put into geostationary orbit and they are expected to link radio amateurs from Brazil to Thailand.
Es’hail-2 carries two Phase 4 amateur radio transponders operating in the 2400 MHz and 10450 MHz bands. A 250 kHz bandwidth linear transponder intended for conventional analogue operations and an 8 MHz bandwidth transponder for experimental digital modulation schemes and DVB amateur television.
The extent of the satellite coverage is shown below.
It is very easy to listen the the voice narrow band transponder traffic by using the BATC web SDR
I have been operating via the QO-100 satellite almost from day one and you can view the online logbook here .
QO-100 and LEO operating position
Transmission / Reception.
ADALM-PLUTO Software Defined Radio – SDR
Amsat UK Filtered S Band Driver Amplifier
Amsat UK 5 watt 2.4 GHz amplifier
The output from the PA is fed via a short length of LDF4-50 coax to a Potty Patch dual band feed and a 1.2 metre offset dish.
And on receive a bullseye LNB with bias tee connected to the receive port on the Pluto
All of the above is controlled by the SDR console software running on Windows 11 I5 PC
For use on the wideband DATV transponder the following equipment will be used for transmission:
BATC Portsdown Four transmit / receive system
USB camera
Lime mini SDR
Amsat UK Filtered S Band Driver Amplifier
PA surplus 2.4 Ghz amplifier
Windows 11 I5 PC running OBS and F1EJP script for FFMPEG
The output from the PA is fed via a short length of LDF4-50 coax to a Potty Patch dual band feed and a 1.2 metre offset dish.
Reception
And on receive a bullseye LNB with bias tee on the 1.2m offset dish
BATC MiniTiouner receiver
BATC Ryde receiver
For more information see:
Amsat DL https://forum.amsat-dl.org/
Amsat UK https://amsat-uk.org/
British Amateur Television Club https://batc.org.uk/
SDR Console Software https://www.sdr-radio.com/