I’m getting a SatNOGS ground station soon but for now I want to know, which is best for satellite reception, VHF or UHF? I know about L-Band and S-Band but i’m not sure if they can work with omnidirectional antennas.
Have a look at the network, all successful obs from today after 21:00 UTC
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It’s a little bit of a tough decision because, on one hand, UHF seems to have alot more observations but, on the other hand, VHF has alot of weather satellites.
Indeed it depends on where you would like to focus, if you want weather satellites then you need to go to VHF but if you want satellites in general I suggest UHF as currently the most satellites we track are either in the generic/commercial UHF band (400-403MHz) or in the radio amateur UHF band (435-438MHz).
There are also satellites in L-Band, if I don’t make a mistake it is used only for downlink by weather satellites, and much more on S-Band but due to limitations satellites usually don’t beacon on this band but only transmit over specific stations. so it is more difficult, depending on your location, receive them.
Now for SatNOGS needs, between VHF and UHF, I say that a UHF station would be more useful, however VHF stations are also more than welcome!
Notice that the APT weather satellites in VHF band are supposed to retire this year.
Also notice that with a good groundplane you can cover both 145 and 435 MHz so you can always decide to choose later.
Something not to difficult to build yourself https://xczcomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Dual-Band-2m-70-cm-Vertical-Ground-Plane-Antenna_ARES.pdf
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Could I just have 2 antennas for both VHF and UHF and connect them together in some way? (I also should mention I am trying to get everything just online pre-built)
all components added also adds to the complexity and increases the chance of something not working as intended. always establish a baseline and only change few things at a time, re-establish a working setup before changing anything.
a simple high-/lowpass diplexer is a pretty easy way to join two antennas, it does however, often break the DC path to the high frequency port so any LNA on that antenna will be unpowered. injecting DC after the diplexer or modifying it to provide a DC path to both ports is a possibility.
if you have the two antennas close to eachother (like 2-3m or so) you can place the diplexer between them and a LNA on the combined port, then a coax down to the sdr/rpi etc.
I don’t know anything about this but what about something like the LimeSDR Mini? It has two SMA connectors so is it possible to connect two antennas?
As starter I would certainly not advice to start with LimeSDR.
If I understand right you want to start with (commercial) online available parts. In that case, a Diamond X30, or X50 , dual band collinear would support both VHF and UHF range for starting. That would be great for passes with elevation up to about 40 - 50 degrees and not the best results for passes over your head with 70 - 90 degrees elevation. For those passses an QFH or turnstile would be better.
I would suggest to start with x50 and one rtl-sdr and schedule some observations on the 2 frequency bands to check your results. Up to 7 meter Aircell 7 or some look alike cable would run without problems and without the need for an LNA (pre- amplifier)
After that you can decide if / what you want to invest in.
Ben
Ok so, I think I should say what I want:
- Extremely easy mounting so I can mount it on my window (suction-cup mount preferably)
- Dipole antenna
- Relatively small
- Sourced from Amazon if possible
- Can be used for both VHF and UHF without any adjusting of any kind
The only thing that mostly resembles my check list is this but it’s telescopic so it requires adjusting the length for using VHF or UHF.
And I guess that at the end you would also like to be able to receive and decode frames send by satellites.
With this minimalist and not adhering to physics setup only the very, very strong transmission like the ISS APRS, SSTV and Voice signals will have a change others will stay below the noise with maybe sometimes an exception.
SatNOGS stations wiki
SatNOGS antenna wiki
The best is, give it a try and see if it is enough so fulfill your needs.
Ok. So in that case, what if I just get a tripod and mount the Diamond X-50 the commenter above suggested?
My reply was based on “what I want” and that was not mentioning a Diamond X-50 Collinear vertical.
Hello and welcome!
Note that in the VHF amateur area there are not so many satellites these days. In the UHF band there are many, many satellites. But just start with something simple - later on you can get better antennas.