Up and Running

[martin_h]

Well antennae is fixed up dongle plugged in and spectrum lab collecting data, dunno if it's the right data only time will tell- fingers crossed, just need a meteor to cross my path now.

Edited August 27, 2016 by martin_h

[SteveNickolls]

Good luck detecting!

Let us all know how you get on.

Cheers,
Steve

[martin_h]

As it happens I was just showing someone the setup, and after 24 hours of nothing, a ping!! To small to trigger the auto save but at least someone got to see and hear it.

[The Admiral]

I'm glad it has come to life! But, you really ought to be getting a few pings per hour, even when there isn't a meteor shower on. What script and dongle are you using, and where is your antenna?

Ian

[martin_h]

16 hours ago, The Admiral said:

I'm glad it has come to life! But, you really ought to be getting a few pings per hour, even when there isn't a meteor shower on. What script and dongle are you using, and where is your antenna?

Ian

Unfortunately my antenna is in the loft - for now, the script I am using is the britastro one from the S@N article http://www.britastro.org/radio/downloads/SkyAtNight/AboutSpectrumLab_v1.pdf

The dongle is the FUNcube dongle pro+

I know the setup works because I can tune into FM/AM stations, one question tho, how can I tell if  Im locked on to the graves site?

[The Admiral]

My antenna is in the loft and I get good results from that. Mind you, I'm a good deal further south than you so I expect my coverage of the area south of Dijon is rather better. Does it have a good view to low in the SE?

You can't actually tell if you are tuned to GRAVES, because of course you only get a signal when it's reflected off a meteor. However, you might be able to confirm that your frequency scale is accurate by tuning to a beacon transmission in the 2m waveband. I use the signal from GB3VHF (http://www.gb3vhf.co.uk/GB3VHFantennadetails.html ) which transmits on precisely 144.430 MHz, so if I tune to 144 428 kHz I get a signal at 2kHz, or there abouts. Of course, if I tune to 143 048 kHz, 2kHz away from the GRAVES frequency, then I should get a meteor scatter signal of around 2kHz also.

Hope that helps.

Ian

[martin_h]

I have a redundant sky dish fairly high up on a south facing wall, so I have just ordered a 6ft Ariel pole, I can remove the dish and use the bracket and pole to get me almost as high as in the loft, and with luck her indoors won't even notice!