April 1st, 2019
As soon, as the narrow band transponder was opened in February, I had my first QSOs via QO-100. Using an MKU LNC 10 in a 80 cm offset dish and my 3 m mesh dish for transmitting, made the first steps very (too) easy.
In the meantime I mentioned, some hams from the Netherlands, experimenting with ADALM-Pluto SDRs, had very good results. So I got one too and was amazed of variety of possibilities it offers. So I heard my first beacon on 9 cm and it was easy to produce a signal on 13 cm. Recently I got two broadband LNAs (I will call them “A” and “B”) from China and was curious to see how these can be used as power amplifiers too.
| Power Source | Power in mW |
|---|---|
| Pluto | 3 |
| Pluto + LNA "A" | 22 |
| Pluto + LNA "B" | 30 |
| Pluto +LNA "A" + LNA "B" | 120 |
After some power measuring I connected the stuff to a W2IMU feedhorn, mounted on a tripod. No problem at all to find my signal on the NB transponder of QO-100. The estimated EIRP is about 2.4 W and results in a signalstrength of 12 dB.
Addendum: April 10th, 2019
3 mW are enough!
At least I mounted a DJ7GP patch feed with the bare naked Pluto in the focus of my 3 m mesh dish. the 3 mW were enough to produce a solid signal on the NB transponder. In this case I have 6 W EIRP to get 16 dB signal.