With the construction of our Portable Satellite Station 3.0 complete, we’ve been looking forward to an opportunity to test the new setup. We chose the Nashua Area Radio Society’s recent Technician License Class as a good time to both test the new stations and to acquaint our Tech Class grads with one of the many things that they can do with their new licenses – amateur satellite operations.

The first transport of the new 3.0 station antenna system turned out to be simple. The booms and counterweights of the new antenna system are easily separated via the removal of a few bolts located at the cross-boom. This allowed the antennas feed-points, rotator loops and polarity switching connections to be removed and transported as complete assemblies. The separation of the longer-boom antennas into two sections also made transporting the antennas easier and made the antenna elements less prone to bending in transport. Setup and cabling of the new 3.0 antenna system as the class site was quick and simple.

The opportunities to make contacts during our Tech Class were limited but the new system performed well with one exception. We saw a higher than expected SWR readings on the 70cm yagi during transmit. We immediately suspected problems with one of the N connectors that were installed during the construction of the new system (component testing during assembly showed the SWR readings on the 70cm side of the system to be in spec.).

After the class, we set up the 3.0 system again at our QTH. Transport and re-assembly of the new system are somewhat easier and faster than our 2.0 portable station antenna setup is.

The 3.0 antenna system uses a similar connector bulkhead approach that we used previously. The rotator controls are handled via a single, 8-conductor cable and we have a new connection for the polarity switching controls on the 3.0 system yagis.

We have had some problems with the connections between the preamplifiers mounted at the antennas and the rotator loops which connect the antennas to them. This problem caused several failures in the associated N-connectors on the 2.0 portable antenna system so we fabricated a simple arrangement to prevent the rotation of the antennas from turning the coax inside the N-connectors and causing these failures.

Some isolation tests were performed on each cabling element of the 70cm side of the 3.0 antenna system and this resulted in the location of an improperly installed N-connector. The faulty connector was easily replaced and this corrected the SWR readings on the 70cm side of the antenna system. The image above shows the SWR readings for the 70cm antenna after the faulty connector was replaced. We checked the SWR performance with the 70cm yagi set for both Left-Hand and Right-Hand Circular Polarization and we saw good results in both configurations.

We also re-checked the SWR performance of the 2m side of the antenna system with the 2m yagi in both polarity settings and it looked good as well.

The 3.0 antenna system uses an Alfa-Spid rotator. The Alfa-Spid can handle the additional weight of the larger yagis and has a more precise pointing ability (1° accuracy) which is helpful given the tighter patterns of the larger, 3.0 yagis.

The new yagis in the 3.0 antenna system have feed point arrangements which allow the polarity of the yagis to be switched between Left-Hand Circular Polarity (LHCP) and Right-Hand Circular Polarity (RHCP). These antennas used a relay arrangement at the feed-points that flip the polarity of one plane of the yagis by 180° which in turn changes the polarity of the antennas between LHCP and RHCP.

With the SWR problem corrected, we set up the 3.0 station radio and controls. The 3.0 station adds our homebuilt PTT Router and the control box from DXengineering which controls polarity switching. Also, the Green Heron rotator control box has been configured to control the new Alfa-Spid rotator.

We are continuing to use the excellent MacDoppler software to control the 3.0 station. MacDoppler provides tracking controls for the antennas and doppler correction for the Icom-9100 transceivers uplink and downlink VFOs.

The image above shows a closer view of the 3.0 station controls. The box in the middle-left with four LEDs and the knob is used to select one of four polarity configurations for the 2m and 70cm yagis – RHCP/RHCP, LHCP/RHCP, RHCP/LHCP, or LHCP/LHCP. Just to the right in the middle stack is our homebrewed PTT Router which expands and improves the PTT sequencing performance of the station. Our station also uses a WaveNode WN-2 for SWR and power monitoring.

So how does the new 3.0 station perform? The new antennas have a tighter pattern requiring careful pointing calibration of the rotators during setup. This is easy to do with the Alfa-Spid rotator. The new antennas have noticeable more gain as compared to the LEO pack used on the 2.0 station. We are also surprised to see how much difference the polarity switching capability makes in certain situations – sometimes as much as two S units (12 dB) in certain situations. The combination of the new antennas and selection of the best polarity combination allows solid operation on many satellites passes with as little as 2 watts of uplink power. We have made a little over 50 QSOs on the new 3.0 station so far and it works great! For more information on the Portable 3.0 Station as well as the 2.0 and 1.0 stations that we’ve built – see the links below:

• A Portable Satellite Station Part 1 – A Simple Station for AO-85
• A Portable Satellite Station Part 2 – 2.0 Station Goals and Antenna System
• A Portable Satellite Station Part 3 – Station Radio and Supporting Equipment
• A Portable Satellite Station Part 4 – 2.0 Station First Contacts!
• A Portable Satellite Station Part 5 – Plans for Our 3.0 Station
• Plans for Upgrading Our 2.0 Station for ARISS Contacts
• Raspberry Pi Satellite Rotator Interface
• PTT Router for Satellite Station 3.0

Fred, AB1OC