Weekly Report 21 July - 25 July 2008

This is a weekly report for the Microwave Engineering Project

1) Our project was announced in Bryon Foster N6IFU "ATV Newsletter" (29 July issue). Thank you Bryon!

2) Initial results from the Microwave Engineering Project exploratory phase were collected and published in the project overview document for review, comment, and critique.

If you subscribe to the feed, the document will be delivered to you automatically. The document can be found here:

http://www.delmarnorth.com/microwave/overview/MicrowaveEngineeringProjectOverview.pdf

3) Greg K6QPV from the San Diego Microwave Group has prepared two beacons for our project. They are 3.4GHz and 5.6GHz and can be installed on Mt. Miguel in San Diego County with about a week's notice. Thank you Greg!

4) Paul and I joined the uWSDR yahoo group, which is the forum for the Microwave SDR project in the UK. Please check out their project page at 

http://uwsdr.berlios.de/

The GeMMA, which is part of the uWSDR project,  sounds like something we could use on MEP, and we'll be following the development closely, as well as providing any help we're able to. uWSDR aims to provide new, open-source hardware for use on the bands above 50MHz. 

Grant writes that he is working on a full uWSDR Rx/Tx, including crossband 1.3/2.3GHz and maybe a 3.4/5.6GHz unit as well. This is very exciting news.

With GeMMA and the transceiver projects from the UK, and the transverter project from the San Bernardino Microwave Society, and the SDRs available from TAPR, and the feeds in development, we have significant parts of a prototype system coming available to us in the very near future. One of the questions for us is what bandwidth do we require in order to accomplish the sorts of things we're dreaming up. 

 

5) A video report from the San Diego Microwave Group range party this past Monday, 21 July 2008 was edited and posted to the feed and on the web. This video shows some of the types of testing (minimum discernable signal and effective radiated power) that we will be doing, and shows the sort of stations that people in the amateur radio microwave community here in San Diego are currently designing and building. 

 

The video report can be found here:

 

http://www.delmarnorth.com/microwave/newsletters/San%20Diego%20Microwave%20Group%20range%20party%202008.mp4

It's a large file. It’s about 120Mb and is nearly 20 minutes long.