AmateurRadio.com

I have just received my first telemetry from the FUNcube satellite, a.k.a. OSCAR 73. It was a piece of cake, one of the easiest things in ham radio I have done. What helped make it easy was that I was using a FUNcube Dongle Pro as the receiver (thanks, John!) . The FUNcube dashboard software supports it out of the box. No drivers to install or soundcards to configure. It was a piece of cake.The Dongle automatically tunes to the right frequency.

Of course, the whole project has been designed to be used by teachers with no previous experience of this kind of stuff. So you would expect it to be easy for a seasoned radio ham!

The FUNcube Dashboard software

The whole thing went something like this:

1. Download and install .NET Framework 4.0 from Microsoft.
2. Download and install FUNcube Dashboard from http://data.funcube.org.uk/
3. Register your call at the FUNcube data warehouse https://warehouse.funcube.org.uk/.
4. Download, read and follow the instructions (PDF files) from the FUNcube site.
5. Connect dual band colinear to FUNcube Dongle.

Sit back and wait for a pass.

 I was not present when the satellite went over as I was downstairs having lunch.

There are no suitable passes over this location this evening or tonight so I will have to wait until tomorrow for another try. Unfortunately apart from an FT-817 and the dual band vertical I don’t have equipment that can operate 2m ans 70cm so I’ll have to leave tryi ng to work through the transponder to someone else.