Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Signals From Above...

I recently had an interesting afternoon up on a local high spot, investigating and monitoring the many satellites, mainly military, that operate in the band 240-270MHz.

These satellites normally have a transponders supporting a number of different frequency payloads, including UHF / S & X Band. Its worth noting that all these satellites are geo-stationary, operating in a fixed position above the equator.

Below is a screenshot from the traces I took today of satellites operating in the UHF band.


This screenshot above covers a number of different satellites, illustrating the different transponder outputs, signal bandwidths and modulation types. The signals illustrated above have been identified as the following:

243.625  -  ComSatBW-2      38KHz Channel  -  Operating at 13.2 East

243.785  -  MilSat 2-3            50KHz Channel  -  Operating at 30.0 East

243.8225 - Milsat 1                50KHz Channel  -  Operating at 39.1 West

243.995 - US UFO F2            8x 6KHz Channels  -  Operating at 28.3 East

244.075 - US UFO F7            8x 6KHz Channels  -  Operating at 23.3 West

244.185 - US FltSatCom F8   5x 6KHz Channels  -  Operating at 15.1 West

The next screenshot below is a slightly wider panoramic display, showing around 8MHz of sprectrum in the upper part of the 240-270MHz band. This shows some good traces for the following satellites:

269.750  -  UFO F2  -  34KHz Channel

268.675  -  SDS3-F2 - 25KHz Channel

265.350  -  UFO F2  -  34KHz Channel

268.000  -  Sircal 1b  - 5x 34KHz Channels


A few notes on my monitoring system setup. In order to capture the above traces, I used the following kit:

AirSpy SDR Receiver
SDR# Software
RFBay LNA-1000 (10-1000MHz 30db Amplifier)
Trivec 2030 UHF MilSat Antenna

Acknowledgements:

Many thanks to the following websites for their supporting content and details:

http://www.uhf-satcom.com/

http://www.satellitenwelt.de/uhfmilsat.htm



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