Station and Quality Data

SatNOGS Hardware
1

Hello,

My station is in test but I am improving it little by little.
As of yesterday, I now have a better quality RTL-SDR with an LNA and a QFH antenna.
I have a slight drift that I will adjust these days and maybe I will need to increase the gain a little (but from what I read, it would not always be good with an LNA)

So now the waterfall usually displays something :slight_smile:

The question I ask myself: For the station to be useful, it must be able to display something but also produce quality data. (If I understood the principle of Satnogs correctly)
So how do you make sure this is the case?

If I compare with another nearby station (to have the same data frame), in case of difference it will be difficult for me to determine which of the data is correct.

I can possibly watch a CW beacon.
For Aalto-1, it is “AALTO1”
On my last observation (https://network.satnogs.org/observations/4061838/), I received “E ILTO E” …
So it’s not terrible …
(I will be increasing the gain over the next few days to see if I can improve this)

With this kind of problem is a station useful for the project?

In view of the current equipment, should I expect better or the “hunt for quality data” is only possible with a rotor and a Yaggi type antenna?

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2

That observation looks good. Nice clear signal. :slight_smile:

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3

CW is a bad modulation for comparing results and data as it is affected a lot by noise and also hasn’t any form of error check. I would suggest to check satellites with other modulation like FSK/MSK/BPSK and see how well your station performs.

In any case even if a station is not that good to demodulate/decode many data, it could be useful for other cases, for example signal in waterfall is useful for finding out if a satellite is alive and for allowing identification of satellites.

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