Well after a real struggle with the semi-rigid cable I managed to finally
get the preamp into some sort of a box. The unit is powered up the coax,
the preamp has been slightly modified to extract the DC supply from the coax.
This also feeds the 18 GHz 12v relay. I managed to find a small quantity
of 12v relays rather than the usual 24v ones.
I must admit I don't really want to put the preamp outside any more instead
I am going to place it where the coax enters the building. That will still cut
down on the distance between the antenna and the preamp.
When no supply is applied to the coax the transmitter is switched straight
through to the antenna in a fail safe manner.
Well I couldn't resist it. While browsing eBay I found someone selling a load
of Comet antennas at about 1/2 price, so I now own one.
Having spoken to the keeper of my nearest ATV repeater G4PAP it seems
as if there are a few people in the area that are QRV on 10 GHz ATV so maybe
that is something to look at. The receive side doesn't look too difficult
(modified LNB) but the transmit side looks a bit more of a challenge.
It also seems like the repeater group would be interested in upgrading their
digital TV capabilities.
The G6NHG 1.3 GHz Alford slot antenna has arrived and very professional it looks too.
Finally I have managed to get my S2-3600 DVB-S/S2
USB Dongle to work! I was missing some codecs. I installed
FedoraPlus and then used that to install the codecs.
I have yet to try it with an Amateur TV Signal but it seems to
perform well with a satellite signal. My Laptop works well with
SD video but struggles a bit with HD video.
When I get the time I will have a go with szap2 and see if I can get
it to operate a 2 MSymbols/s. The card is capable of doing it so it
should all work. When I tried telling my Windows Viewer to scan
a satellite with a 2M transponder it froze!
I have now tried the USB tuner on a 32bit Ubuntu system
and I am getting exactly the same problem. It detects the
device but is unable to do anything with it. So now I know it
is not a 64bit Linux issue. At least I have good old Windows
to fall back on! A Google search was of little help so the problem
remains unsolved.
I have never used Ubuntu before. I am impressed with it's
ease of configuration compared to the Red Hat offering.
Well after a real struggle with the semi-rigid cable I managed to finally
