Weekly Plan 18 August - 22 August 2008

Greetings to the list! My apologies for a bit of delay over the past two weeks. The end of

summer has certainly been a busy time around here, with visits, travel, and getting the

kids (and the parents) ready for going back to school.

I have some updates and document releases planned for this week, which include the

following:

1) Transverter research document to be released with Grayg's updates

2) San Diego surface-mount capabilities described so we can move forward on any

boards that may be available from uWSDR

3) H.264 Advanced Video Codec licensing update from MPEG LA

4) Feed order put together for Kent Britain Vivaldis for experimentation

Welcome to the Microwave Engineering Project development email list! Thanks for

joining. Please forward this email to anyone you think would be interested in the

development of the project.

Send updates and work proposals to w5nyv@yahoo.com

Sign up for this list at

http://lists.uppermeadow.com/mailman/listinfo/mep-dev

Our project webpage is located at

http://www.delmarnorth.com/microwave

There is a podcast that you can subscribe to. This will deliver project documents, audio,

and video to you so that you do not have to go check the website for them. They will

appear in the feed reader of your choice.

Weekly Report 28 July - 3 August 2008

This is a weekly report for the Microwave Engineering Project covering July 28 – August 3

 

1) A transverter tracking document was released. Discussion, comparison, and contrast between transverters and SDRs began (and continues) with several team members collecting articles and gaining familiarity with the current state of the art in amateur radio microwave transverters.

 

2) Atmospheric and Ionospheric explorations were proposed as a potential feature of the system.

 

3) Project announcements will run in the Packet Status Register from TAPR, the next issue of DUBUS, the September newsletter for the San Bernardino Microwave Society, and were posted to eHam, the forums at qrz.com, and the Amateur Radio Forums. The next meeting of the San Bernardino Microwave Society is 7 August 2008, where MEP updates will be presented. 

Transverter Tracker

Transverters for the bands we're considering (3.4GHz/5.6-8GHz). Looking for more, so please write me with any others that you find out about.

Weekly Plan 28 July - 1 August 2008

Plans for this week: July 28 – August 1

The focus for this week is on transverters, with the goal
being a summary document after the San Bernardino Microwave
Society meeting on August 7th.

Other areas of research for this week are feeds, sources,
and use cases.

Welcome to the Microwave Engineering Project development
email list! Thanks for joining. Please forward this email
to anyone you think would be interested in the development
of the project.

Send updates and work proposals to w5nyv@yahoo.com

Sign up for this list at

http://lists.uppermeadow.com/mailman/listinfo/mep-dev

Our project webpage is located at

http://www.delmarnorth.com/microwave

There is a podcast that you can subscribe to. This will
deliver project documents, audio, and video to you so that
you do not have to go check the website for them. They will
appear in the feed reader of your choice.

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.

San Diego Microwave Group Range Party 2008

San Diego Microwave Group Range Party 2008 Video Report. By W5NYV and KB5MU.

First Round Exploratory Phase Results

First round of the results from the exploratory phase of the Microwave Engineering Project.