Built satcan

Everything technical about radio can be discussed here, whether it's transmitting or receiving. Guides, charts, diagrams, etc. are all welcome.
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Gigahertz
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Built satcan

Post by Gigahertz » Sun Nov 19, 2017 12:19 pm

Has anyone got a link for a built satcan I can buy or some got one they would like to sell?

Got a couple of gunn diodes kicking about, I've made up the some boards and tested on a frequency counter but would like to listen to the audio side.

If not I'll head down the route of a PLL LNB,bias tee and WFM scanner, just abit costly for a test.

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Re: Built satcan

Post by thetufparker » Sun Nov 19, 2017 6:04 pm


Frequent Lee
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Re: Built satcan

Post by Frequent Lee » Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:10 am

DC kits stuff is no longer in production.

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Re: Built satcan

Post by shorty » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:29 pm


RF-Head
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Re: Built satcan

Post by RF-Head » Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:18 pm

Nope sorry, That one has 479,5MHz out and not Baseband for MPX
I still have the Philips ones and also have some pcb's for it
http://www.hf-electronics.nl/Webwinkel- ... 4-916.html

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OldskoolPirate
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Re: Built satcan

Post by OldskoolPirate » Tue Nov 21, 2017 11:56 pm

Are these getting rare now ? Can never find any. Rig builders don’t even supply them now days. Is there any other way other than band 1 to link ? Not anything just further up the band either.
:tup

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Re: Built satcan

Post by pirateaddict » Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:08 am

Yes mate.. Infra red links are said to be untraceable... Or there's the Internet or maybe a WiFi link! I'd love to know if a vpn would work too!

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Re: Built satcan

Post by OldskoolPirate » Wed Nov 22, 2017 9:25 am

Infrared sounds good but is the receiver cheap to go in the rig ?
:tup

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Re: Built satcan

Post by Albert H » Wed Nov 22, 2017 10:57 am

We used infra red lasers back in the 80s. We used a pair of beams about a metre apart, so that there was no interruption if a pigeon flew through the beams. We got it to work - in mono - from block to block in Shepherds Bush. It was tricky to set up and noisy when it rained!. The only thing that it did for us was allow us to use a studio in one block and broadcast from the next. We abandoned the idea after about 10 days, and went back to very low power Band III.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Built satcan

Post by stevemay » Thu Nov 23, 2017 8:27 pm

Albert H wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 10:57 am We used infra red lasers back in the 80s. We used a pair of beams about a metre apart, so that there was no interruption if a pigeon flew through the beams. We got it to work - in mono - from block to block in Shepherds Bush. It was tricky to set up and noisy when it rained!. The only thing that it did for us was allow us to use a studio in one block and broadcast from the next. We abandoned the idea after about 10 days, and went back to very low power Band III.
My goodness do you ever stop lying? What station was this then? As it's from the 80s you should have no problem saying. In the 80s it was all band 3 and 1 and I was involved in at least 4 stations in the 80s around west london so what station was this?

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Re: Built satcan

Post by Albert H » Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:07 am

Do you remember CDR? Came from Norland mostly. It lasted about a year. The two kids who had the studio lived in the next block, one floor down from the top. We had endless trouble with noise on Band III links, mostly because of the two stations on the Harrow Road who used insane amounts of power out of their studios and had plenty of spurii all over Band III. When I got a couple of Spectra-Physics lasers, we decided to give an optical link a try.

The modulation scheme for the two 5mW HeNe infra-red laser tubes is still secret after all these years, since it was used a year or so later for the first ever scattered light audio surveillance monitor system, and is still in use to this day by some security services. Some really weird technology came out of the stuff we tried to conceal links. I've still got one of the receiving telescopes we used. I found it in a box of miscellaneous optical bits and pieces when I was having a clear out, and couldn't figure out what it was, for a while! The optical link worked quite well - when it was correctly aligned - but really got noisy in heavy rain!

CDR was also (probably) the first station to try a mains link from their studio to the lift room two floors above. The original system was at about 140kHz FM and went up the Neutral and Earth. The circuit was based on a thing published in the National Semiconductor data book for a "Remote Loudspeaker". It worked quite well, but could be susceptible to mains-borne interference, particularly from the heating system.

They were also early adopters of the Band IV gear we hacked together from surplus Pye Pocketphone PF1s. The only real problems we had with the Band IV gear was hacksawing the boards in the right place! We used to chop off the crystal oscillator and phase modulator from the TX, and feed a rock-bound PLL board into the multiplier chain. The receiver used the original crystal oscillator and multiplier, together with the front end and first IF stage. All the squelch and audio stages were cut off since they were designed for narrowband speech and wouldn't support quality audio.The crystal filter was removed and the IF then went into a standard 10.7MHz IF strip - the Ambit kit one was always a favourite. On later builds, I added a 3SK88 pre-amplifier with a critically tuned filter to massively improve the receiver sensitivity, and I also did a couple of the transmitters with additional grounded-base, push-pull 2N3866 "power" amplifiers, to get the original 80 - 100 mW up to close to a Watt. These UHF rigs were always matched to 75Ω to allow the use of Belling-Lee TV aerial connectors, TV aerial downlead and TV Yagis. The telly aerials were very cheap and really directional and never looked out of place on a rooftop! I have to thank BDHK for the idea of using the TV aerial hardware.

I've just remembered what "CDR" stood for: "Community Development Radio". Some of their guys subsequently went on to other stations and the two original kids moved to Fulham - near to the end of the Kings Road - and did "Lovelight Radio" for a while. I lost touch with them in the late 80s when I moved abroad for a while. I heard that they had a RH-built rig removed from one of the Brentford blocks because it was entertaining the commercial pilots on final approach to Heathrow....

In those days, it was possible to cover a significant proportion of London with as little as 40 or 50 Watts - there were big gaps in Band II and the noise floor was very much lower. Happy days!
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

stevemay
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Re: Built satcan

Post by stevemay » Fri Nov 24, 2017 4:14 am

Albert H wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:07 am Do you remember CDR? Came from Norland mostly. It lasted about a year. The two kids who had the studio lived in the next block, one floor down from the top. We had endless trouble with noise on Band III links, mostly because of the two stations on the Harrow Road who used insane amounts of power out of their studios and had plenty of spurii all over Band III. When I got a couple of Spectra-Physics lasers, we decided to give an optical link a try.

The modulation scheme for the two 5mW HeNe infra-red laser tubes is still secret after all these years, since it was used a year or so later for the first ever scattered light audio surveillance monitor system, and is still in use to this day by some security services. Some really weird technology came out of the stuff we tried to conceal links. I've still got one of the receiving telescopes we used. I found it in a box of miscellaneous optical bits and pieces when I was having a clear out, and couldn't figure out what it was, for a while! The optical link worked quite well - when it was correctly aligned - but really got noisy in heavy rain!

CDR was also (probably) the first station to try a mains link from their studio to the lift room two floors above. The original system was at about 140kHz FM and went up the Neutral and Earth. The circuit was based on a thing published in the National Semiconductor data book for a "Remote Loudspeaker". It worked quite well, but could be susceptible to mains-borne interference, particularly from the heating system.

They were also early adopters of the Band IV gear we hacked together from surplus Pye Pocketphone PF1s. The only real problems we had with the Band IV gear was hacksawing the boards in the right place! We used to chop off the crystal oscillator and phase modulator from the TX, and feed a rock-bound PLL board into the multiplier chain. The receiver used the original crystal oscillator and multiplier, together with the front end and first IF stage. All the squelch and audio stages were cut off since they were designed for narrowband speech and wouldn't support quality audio.The crystal filter was removed and the IF then went into a standard 10.7MHz IF strip - the Ambit kit one was always a favourite. On later builds, I added a 3SK88 pre-amplifier with a critically tuned filter to massively improve the receiver sensitivity, and I also did a couple of the transmitters with additional grounded-base, push-pull 2N3866 "power" amplifiers, to get the original 80 - 100 mW up to close to a Watt. These UHF rigs were always matched to 75Ω to allow the use of Belling-Lee TV aerial connectors, TV aerial downlead and TV Yagis. The telly aerials were very cheap and really directional and never looked out of place on a rooftop! I have to thank BDHK for the idea of using the TV aerial hardware.

I've just remembered what "CDR" stood for: "Community Development Radio". Some of their guys subsequently went on to other stations and the two original kids moved to Fulham - near to the end of the Kings Road - and did "Lovelight Radio" for a while. I lost touch with them in the late 80s when I moved abroad for a while. I heard that they had a RH-built rig removed from one of the Brentford blocks because it was entertaining the commercial pilots on final approach to Heathrow....

In those days, it was possible to cover a significant proportion of London with as little as 40 or 50 Watts - there were big gaps in Band II and the noise floor was very much lower. Happy days!
Breathtaking you seem to have lost your mind to the point of no return. Cdr I don't recall that does anybody else? What frequency?

RF-Head
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Re: Built satcan

Post by RF-Head » Fri Nov 24, 2017 9:46 pm

i have about 100 pcs Philips satcans left
High quality cans and super stable
Only things it has a TV plug input and not F connnector
But thats not a problem you can use a Tv-F adapter
sell in batch of 25pcs
Price please PM

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Re: Built satcan

Post by Albert H » Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:36 pm

stevemay wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 4:14 am Breathtaking you seem to have lost your mind to the point of no return. Cdr I don't recall that does anybody else? What frequency?
No "Steve May" - you have. I don't recall a "Steve May" around the west London radio scene in the 80s. I remember a lot of other people though - many of whom are still friends of mine (and one or two I don't get on with, but that's life!). I also remember the grief that we old hippies got from the newer breed of "radio entrepreneurs" in the late 80s - when the fun went out of it.

FYI CDR came from Shepherds Bush, usually on 92.8 MHz, and was the reason that AVM and I found a huge drum of UR67 in a cupboard in the "Community Area" on the top floor of Norland. It was too heavy for the two of us to remove, but we supplied lots of other people with offcuts from that reel. We supplied everyone with aerial cable for ages!

Thinking about it, the only Steve May I recall was over in Mottingham -near Five Ways - who had a bad rep for "recycling" rigs that had been removed from the tops of blocks. Last I heard, he'd fried his brain with lots of noxious chemicals and had taken up cross-dressing.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

stevemay
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Re: Built satcan

Post by stevemay » Mon Nov 27, 2017 2:50 am

Albert H wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:36 pm
stevemay wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 4:14 am Breathtaking you seem to have lost your mind to the point of no return. Cdr I don't recall that does anybody else? What frequency?
No "Steve May" - you have. I don't recall a "Steve May" around the west London radio scene in the 80s. I remember a lot of other people though - many of whom are still friends of mine (and one or two I don't get on with, but that's life!). I also remember the grief that we old hippies got from the newer breed of "radio entrepreneurs" in the late 80s - when the fun went out of it.

FYI CDR came from Shepherds Bush, usually on 92.8 MHz, and was the reason that AVM and I found a huge drum of UR67 in a cupboard in the "Community Area" on the top floor of Norland. It was too heavy for the two of us to remove, but we supplied lots of other people with offcuts from that reel. We supplied everyone with aerial cable for ages!

Thinking about it, the only Steve May I recall was over in Mottingham -near Five Ways - who had a bad rep for "recycling" rigs that had been removed from the tops of blocks. Last I heard, he'd fried his brain with lots of noxious chemicals and had taken up cross-dressing.
You would be correct on both fronts he is into cross dressing and supplied terrible rigs but you and Steve may know each other better then I do after all on a personal scale as EVERYBODY on this site knows so you should know a lot better then me, also your stories and the detail are amazing you have quite the imagination you are more then crazy

Albert H
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Re: Built satcan

Post by Albert H » Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:08 am

It's funny that you hide behind Steve May's nom de plume - a very strange choice.

End of discussion.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Built satcan

Post by THE GOVERNOR » Wed Dec 20, 2017 11:45 pm

This is fucking funny :lol:

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