Art WA8RMC reports that all inventory of MiniTiouner-Express, the DATV receiver/analyzer for DVB-S/DVB-S2, has now been exhausted with all available units being shipped to UK for distribution. The PayPal order rate jumped for one-or-two per week, to two-or-three per day after the OSCAR-100 satellite was turned on. Art has received long-lead-time blank PCB’s and DigiKey components are starting to come in for assembling the PCBs. The Chinese celebrations have delayed the ordering of the Serit NIM Tuners and the tuners will not be received until the end of March. Art expects that MiniTiouner-Express units will be available for shipment again, sometime in April.
Charles G4GUO received yet another box of 15 each units on March 01 for EU stock. However, each unit already had a buyer-placed order waiting for it. The “final” batch of 5 each units were shipped off to Charles during February and are expected to clear UK customs in another week or so.
Charles G4GUO has been having many successful DATV QSOs with the Es'hail-2 OSCAR-100 DATV satellite. Most are RB-DATV with most being 250 KSymb/s of 333 KSymb/s. With a symbol rate of 250 KSymb/s, Charles can hit the OSCAR-100 with only 10W output of DATV RF power using his 1.8-meter dish antenna. An SR of 1 MSymb/sec requires about 30W. Charles explained to the project team that – “every evening OSCAR-100 is very very busy”.
Charles’s home station consists of:
1) MiniTiouner-Express RX
2) DATV-Express TX board
3) Express Transmitter software for Windows.
4) self-designed 2.4 GHz RF Power Amp (using MRF7S24250) currently delivering up to 130W of CW output power.
5) 1.8-meter dish antenna with dual-band-feed for 2.4 GHz uplink and 10 GHz downlink.
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DATV Video received by G4GUO from G4BAO using OSCAR-100.
Side view of G4GUO Dual-Band-Feed for OSCAR-100 antenna.
G4GUO’s 1.8-M dish antenna for using OSCAR-100.
Project Speed is set to slow….de Ken W6HHC