[amsat-bb] Re: S-Band Newbies

[Estes Wayne-W10191 <W10191@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

James La Frieda wrote, about S-band newbies:

The first thing that most of them need to do is: learn the fundamentals of noise figure, gain, noise bandwidth, polarization loss - and how to compute a link margin- for otherwise they will be wasting their time and money using antennas with too little gain, downconverters with too high a noise figure and not enough gain, and using front-end components with too much insertion loss.

Wayne replies:

Newbies do NOT need to go through all the calculations.  They just need good advice!  Getting on Mode-S can be made VERY SIMPLE if appropriate information is available.  We need "real world" articles that explain in simple terms that reliable mode-S reception requires XX antenna gain, YY noise figure, good image rejection, and ZZ converter gain.  Those articles should describe various low-cost sources for equipment that meets those requirements.  Last but not least, the articles must explain that buildings and trees severely attenuate microwave reception.

Wayne Estes W9AE
----
Via the amsat-bb mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org