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Teotwaki:
Brazilian Portuguese language pirates., active now 1456 UTC. Using a borrowed R8600 on a discone, Orange County Calif.

~SIGINT~:
Good catch on the discone. Those 225-400 MHz line-of-sight (LOS) SATCOM satellites are circular polarized, Right Hand Circular (RHC) to be exact, vise the normal linear polarization.

Teotwaki:

--- Quote from: ~SIGINT~ on November 21, 2022, 1646 UTC ---Good catch on the discone. Those 225-400 MHz line-of-sight (LOS) SATCOM satellites are circular polarized, Right Hand Circular (RHC) to be exact, vise the normal linear polarization.

--- End quote ---

Thanks Sigint! I wanted folks to know how easy it is to receive interesting UHF satcom signals on just a discone.

I've mainly posted about HF pirate beacons and HF military comms but I'm a long time UHF satcom listener. I have a pretty nice collection of RHCP antennas and access to others when needed. I also have some classic original satcom documents I used way back when.

Original USN Satcom book


My Precious :-)  a D&M C-120


The "Stick Man", a Navy AS-2815/SSR-1 with the AM-6534/SSR-1 AMPLIFIER CONVERTER (not shown)
It was one of four RHCP omi antennas for a shipboard Fleet Satellite Broadcast Message receive-only system. I need to figure out how to mount it up on a tile roof...


I also have a rather large military UHF cross pol yagi new in the transit case. Hard to get to for a picture. It's either Dorne & Margolin or Trivec Avant. Another hard to dig out antenna is a set of cross polarized UHF log periodic yagi antennas in a gray fiberglass radome.I've built a few RHCP antennas from scratch when needed.

I'm UHF satcom lurker AND a great admirer of all that you have posted!




 

~SIGINT~:
Nice collection of antennae. My first UHF receiver dates back to 20+ years ago. It was a military Motorola (and I can not remember the nomenclature right now) unit that was shelter mounted on rack rails. I then got into the Motorola URC series and later the LST series transceivers. I have something like 3 x Dorne & Margolin 120 antennae, one beat up one which was permanently mounted outside and a pristine one in the bag, a "bat wing" antenna which is designed to be vehicle mounted and a high gain yagi. I have not had the opportunity to put the SATCOM antenna back up yet.

Good to know that the ICOM IC-R8600 works well on SATCOM. It's hard to find a good SATCOM receiver. I have the IC-R8500 as my primary SATCOM receiver. Consequently, I have heard the UHF pirates using my Barker & Williamson T2FD HF antenna connected to the R8600. In theory it should not work, but it does although not so great.

This is my previous antenna farm. I moved about 6 months ago and struggling with ways to mount all of the antennae. I think there might be a tower in the future.

Best MWDX antenna?

And before I forget, I also purchased a RTL-SDR - L Band Patch Antenna a little over a year ago and it's fantastic. There is some interesting stuff above 1 GHz. I have been checking out INMARSAT etc ... and some aeronautical traffic. That antenna is connected to my RSPduo.

Teotwaki:

--- Quote from: ~SIGINT~ on November 21, 2022, 1855 UTC ---
This is my previous antenna farm.

--- End quote ---

Pictures?? I want to see what other satcom cult members have .....  8)

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