station



Earth Station: N1KPR

	Here are two views of the station gear for EME, Radio Astronomy, and SETI.



The four pieces from top left clockwise, are: the modified Tenma satellite meter, the Starfire bias-Tee with feedhorn probe polarizer control, the Sunfire signal level meter and preamp, and the 950-2250 MHz spectrum analyzer. The Sunfire and Starfire are home brew. The Tenma is modified for continuous voltage adjustment for controlling the position of the probe in the feedhorn. Note that the Tenma is essentially an integrated version of the Sunfire/Starfire twins. This allows for the simultaneous operation of two dishes/feedhorns. Both the Tenma and Sunfire can be used as TPRs (Total Power Receivers) for field use with the spectrum analyzer. This allows for easy alignment of the dishes, feedhorns, and actuator controls..



	Another view with the CRT off. The actual receiver is on the back shelf at top-center. It is a modified Icom IC R-7000 with the AGC circuit defeatable and outputs added for the "S" meter and detector audio. The signals from the meter and detector are fed to an integrator/translator module (still being built...photos soon) which drives the sound card of a Pentium III running a digital chart recorder S/W program. The program will record in all three domains: time, frequency, and amplitude, thus recording all pertenant data including phase and doppler shift. The integrator also displays the amplitude of the "S" meter and detector circuits three ways: digital (LED) readouts, analog meters, and LED bar graphs. The integration control is of the "passive switched capacitor" variety and has fundamental time periods of: real time, 1, 5, 10 and 20 seconds.

		Photos of the Integrator/Translator (squash box) will be posted in April '04 as soon as I finish building the op amp pc boards and test the thing. Hopefully, it will work.

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