Category Archives: Aircraft Scatter

Disappointing Morning / Amazing Evening

August 17th, 2017

The whole morning I monitored EA2TZ/B in IN93BF on 1296.854 MHz over a distance of 1072 km, peaking up to 30 dB. The vertical profiles of 0:00 UTC from Paris and Bordeux showed an inversion at 1000 m altitude. F6DKW from Paris was booming here, but nothing could be heard of beacons close to the path or in tests with F6CIS, IN94WL and F6AJW, IN93EK. The duct was just too high.

Tonight Paolo, IK7UXW, JN80XP, asked me in the KST chat, to give it another try. We had discussed the possibility of combined propagation with aircraft scatter and tropospheric ducting before.

The path is perfect, as there is one hop over the Alps and a plain track over the Adriatic Sea.

On Tuesday last week, while I was watching the other Paolo aboard the International Space Station via HAMTV on 13 cm, Paolo had initial QSOs in this propagation mode with Daniel, DL3IAE, in JN49DG on 23 and 13 cm. That was a great effort! So I was more than poised for a try.

Paolo has a 2 m dish and QRO, so he started calling me in CW. I heard “musical noise”, EMEers know, what I mean, with very strong bursts from time to time, lasting for some seconds. After a while we decided to try in JT65c. And from the start I could decode Paolo in most of the periods.

The better decodes always correlated with airplanes, crossing the path within a specific window soutwest of Munich defined by a path with a virtual end at the coast of the Adriatic Sea.

Most impressive was the crossing of an A380-800

At the end some bursts could be seen again (after 30 seconds)

The whole Test took almost an hour to complete, as my TX power is about 10 dB less than Paolos. It is evident that JT65 with 60 second periods is not very useful.

Paolos reference for ducting on the Adriatic Sea is IQ3ZB/B. Tonight it was at S9 + 30 dB. With good conditions it can be at S9 + 60 dB. So we agreed in continuing the tests in other  digital modes and in CW as well as on 13 cm.

G8MBU – JT65c Beacon via Aircraft Scatter

July 5th, 2017

After installation of new transverters for 23 and 13 cm with stabilized LOs a couple of months ago. I gathered some experience in using JT65C mode on EME. So I undertook a new attempt to receive and decode G8MBU via aircraft scatter today. As antenna I use a 3 m dish with a dual band ringfeed.

Path DJ5AR to G8MBU

The beacon is located at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, IO91IR37, 683 km from Mainz, JN49CV. It runs 2 W power into an omnidirectional dual alford slot antenna. The mode used is JT65c. Nominal frequency is 1296.800 MHz. To successfully decode the signal, the SSB dial should be set to 1296.7986 MHz, to get a tuning tone of 1400 Hz in WSJT.

There is a small window between the Isle of Wight and Mainz, where high flying aircraft can be “seen” from either places. But only a few airplanes cross the path within and fewer fly along the path. Reflections of G8MBU could be seen from time to time, but mostly too weak and too short to provide decodes. It took nearly 3 hours until the first decode happened at -22 dB and just some minutes later a second one appeared on the display at -21 dB:

1158 -22  4.0 1282 #* G8MBU IO90IR
1206 -21  3.9 1268 #* G8MBU IO90IR

In total I monitored G8MBU for 5 hours. The propagation conditions were normal today, no tropo at all.

Asymmetrical Reflections on Aircraft Scatter

June 8th, 2015

A long time monitoring of the beacon F1ZMT in JN07CX via Aircraft Scatter on 1296.872 MHz shows asymmetrical reflections on most of the crossing planes.

As the distance to the beacon is 624 km and it´s ERP of just 10 W (a panel antenna to the south combined with an omnidirectional big wheel) is rather QRP, only weak reflections can be detected from time to time. This ensures, that received signals were reflected on single airplanes. In this example can be seen, that the reception starts shortly before the plane crosses the path between DJ5AR in Mainz and F1ZMT in LeMans. Unexpectetly the signal can be seen for quite a while after crossing. There is a continuous variation of the doppler shift and no spread of the signal, as is usual for a moving solid reflector.

 

Monitoring DX Beacons via Aircraft Scatter

May 5th, 2015

The monitoring of distant beacons can be a boring job, even when using the waterfall diagram of a SDR. I prefer SpecJT of the WSJT package in JT65c mode. It is much more sensitive and even at slow speed faint refections can be seen clearly.

2015-05-05 12_07_28 F1ZMT

The example shows F1ZMT in JN07CX, 624 km from Mainz. The beacon operates 10 W into an omnidirectional antenna on 1296.872 MHz. The reflections in the screenshot were caused by 3 airplanes crossing the path one after the other.

 

 

AirScout: New Version 1.1.0.0 is online!

February 10th, 2015

A brand new version of AirScout can be download. Frank, DL2ALF, has implemented a new source for airplane data as well as a couple of new features.

2015-02-10 20_12_49-AirScout - Aircraft Scatter Prediction V1.1.0.0 (c) 2013 DL2ALFMost spectacular is the ability to track airplanes with the antenna in azimuth and elevation. When enabling tracking, the user can select between several interfaces. I am using the plain WSJT-compatible “azel.dat” file. First tests on DB0NCO are very promising.

Presentation “Reflections on Air- and Spacecrafts”

January 15th, 2015Banner GHz-Tagung 2015On February 21st, 2015 Jan, PA3FXB, and I will give a lecture in Dorsten at the GHz convention. It will be held in german and partly in english and is basing on the former lectures “Let´s Bounce”.

We will talk about unusual use of Aircraft Scatter and our experiences using ISCAT. Two years ago the idea, to try ISS Bounce, was born and discussed in Dorsten. We will show what we have done in the meantime in practising this propagation mode.

A big Dish, a big Bird and a big Signal

January 6th, 2015

Jan, PA3FXB, and I skeduled a very special ISCAT test on 23 cm for today. The CAMRAS team had planned to operate PI9CAM with the 25 m radiotelescope in Dwingeloo for some astronomical experiments this afternoon. Before starting with that, we used an ISS pass with low elevation to try ISS bounce with the big dish. Such a pass ensures slow variation of azimuth end elevation angles, which is essential to track moving object like the ISS (or other spacecrafts in low orbits) with an antenna of a weight of 120 tons.

DSC_0384aWe had very strong reflections right from the beginning, but no decodes. Maybe the signal level was to high? This has to be investigated. Then we changed to aircraft scatter, although the dish had to be kept elevated at 10° by safety reasons, I got strong reflections from airplanes quite close to PI9CAM. Not as strong as from the ISS, but decodable now and it was possible to work in CW too.

Despite the fact, we had no QSO via ISS bounce, we learnt, that it is possible to track objects in low orbits with the 25 m radiotelescope, as long as the elevation keeps low. This opens up a perspective to make use of other spacecrafts as reflectors.

ISCAT – a new experience

January 3rd, 2015

Inspired by an article, published by Rex, VK7MO, and David, VK3HZ, in the latest DUBUS [1], Ronald, ON7FLY, and I performed a first test in using ISCAT-B mode (by K1JT) for aircraft scatter on 23 cm. When looking on AirScout it doesn´t seem to be very challenging to have an QSO. But Ronald is obstructed by a hill in eastern directions and he didn´t expect to have an opportunity to work eastwards on 23 cm at all.

2014-12-27 16_37_03-AirScout - ON7FLYRonald is located in JO10LT and the distance is just 388 km. He uses a 44 element yagi with only 2 W at the feedpoint. On my side a 3 m dish and 150 W are in use. First of all we tried in SSB and were able to complete a QSO after a while. I could copy ON7FLY very weak, but readable. Then we tried in ISCAT-B with 30 seconds periods and it was amazing to see, that Ronald´s signal could be decoded even when only traces appeared in the spectrum.

2015-01-02 15_28_46-His signal can be seen in the center section (The drop outs are reactions of the AGC on radar noise). The above sequence could be decoded to:

2015-01-02 15_29_22-Since the periods of 30 seconds were far too long, we needed certain airplanes to complete. then we tried FSK441 with no decodes and switched to JT6M and completed the third QSO. In the meantime I found a hint in the above mentioned article, how to reduce the T/R periods to 15 seconds. So we completed a fourth QSO in ISCAT-B again in shortest time: 2015-01-02 18_02_00-

 

[1] Rex Moncur, VK7MO, David Smith, VK3HZ, Aircraft Scatter on 10 and 24 GHz using ISCAT: DUBUS Vol. 43 4/2014

Presentation “Let´s Bounce” IIa

October 21st, 2014

Last night, when I was going to switch off all the stuff in my shack, I saw an email from Malte, DE7LMS. I opened it and found a link to a video he recorded of my recent presentation in Weinheim.