Notebook of Time and Frequency Experiments
In Part 1 I described some background about SDR dynamic range as an introduction to the measurements I did on a RTL-SDR.com v3 USB "dongle" SDR. Now for the results. I wrote a Gnu Radio program to help measure the…
I'm using several USB "dongle" SDR sticks from RTL-SDR.com. These nifty $20 devices can receive from 100 kHz to above 1700 MHz. They have a low noise amplifier in the front end that is adjustable from 0 to about 50…
Since I posted my original articles on configuring the Gnuradio-based op25 P25 trunking scanner, there's been a lot of progress in the code. In particular, there is a new fork that changes the program to a command-line version, which saves…
Here's a waterfall showing the 80M CW band from a bit after 1600 UTC (noon) and 2000 UTC (4:00PM EDT) on eclipse day. There was clearly enhanced propagation for about an hour, starting ~15 minutes before the local maximum (73%…
I've continued processing the data generated from software-defined-radio recordings I made during the 2017 solar eclipse at my fairly isolated and low-RF-noise location on Beaver Island, Michigan (45 38 38 N, 85 29 24 W, grid square EN75gp). The nearest…
I set up a smaller version of my mad-scientist stuff at our cottage on Beaver Island, Michigan (45 38 38 N, 85 29 24 W, grid square EN75gp), to record the RF spectrum before, during, and after the eclipse on…
It wasn't too hard for the HamSci guys to convince me to bring a Cesium frequency standard to my portable location in Michigan to drive the HPSDR receiver that will do band recordings for the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse HF…
I was fussing about signal generator output accuracy because I wanted to calibrate my HPSDR Hermes software defined radio ("SDR") so that I could calculate the absolute power input in dBm, assuming a 50 ohm load impedance) based on the…
Just when you thought it couldn't get more boring (reference my last post about signal generator calibration... I did all these careful calibrations of my signal generator to check its accuracy and linearity. Everything looked good, except that the signal…
UPDATE: it turns out that my "best" power meter was actually about 0.5 dB off. See my later post for further details. I want to calibrate my software defined radio receiver prior to doing a bunch of recordings of the…