Piszkéstető UHF
The Piszkéstető UHF station is a SatNOGS-capable satellite receiver station, suitable for receptions in the passband between 435 and 438 MHz. The station is based on the following components:
- SPID RAS rotator with off-the-shelf controller;
- 2x2 stacked WIMO X-Quad 70 cm UHF antennas (including the appropriate phase line);
- Aluminium tubes (40x2, 60x2);
- Cross mast clamps (for the H-shaped antenna support structure, for the counterweight) and distance mast clamps (for connecting the 60mm support tube to the bar);
- Wilkinson power combiner;
- HA7DCD LNA: triple filtered, double amplified: https://decent.org (previously: an SSB SP-70 preamplifier);
- N-N bias tee;
- N-N cables (H155, 4x 1m, exactly the same length to connect the antennas to the Wilkinson power combiner, 3m, to connect the power combiner with the LNA);
- An appropriately long N-N cable (H155, between the LNA and the bias tee);
- A shorter N-SMA cable (betweem the bias tee and the dongle);
- RTL-SDR dongle (v3);
- Lots of ferrite beads;
- PC Engines APU2 with Devuan single-board computer; and
- software stack extensions atop satnogs-client, enabling custom pre/postprocessing scripts and additional real-time packet decoding hooks.
Our infrastructure for this station infrastructure is supported by the same grants which funded the GRBAlpha mission, an 1U CubeSat for in-orbit performance tests of detectors suitable for small form-factor gamma-ray burst detections. The station also regularly receives the SMOG-1 PocketQube as well as we contribute to the data reception for the missions VZLUSAT-2, BDSat and Planetum-1. The aim of the custom extensions atop the satnogs-client
is to allow the real-time decoding of GRBAlpha, VZLUSAT-2, BDSat and Planetum-1 packets and transfer the packets to the interactive ground control software with a minimal (≲ 10-20ms) latency while keeping a 100% compatible interfacing to the SatNOGS system at the same time. Our real-time packet forwarding is merged with additional stations, most prominently with the Jablonec SatNOGS station. In addition to this real-time packet forwarding, further extensions allows the proper unwinding of the antenna and rotator cabling in advance of the passes.