Latest news

17th of may 2011, long time no see

It has been quite a while since the last update. A lot has happened in the mean time. Apart from my fulltime job in the space business as RF designer, I'm also still involved in AMSAT-UKs FUNcube project. I'm designing, building and testing the FUNcube RF board, which contains the transceiver. This work is sucking up LOTS and LOTS of spare time, but the reward is a functional radio, ready for launch! Bear with me for a while!

In the mean time the Delfi-C3 groundstation is finally taking shape again, now being defunct for almost a full year (!). I'm planning to move back the WebSDR soon, and also adding a 137kHz receiver to the setup. This is all in that precious spare time, so do not expect short-term miracles ;)

30th of August 2010, servers and problems

For some time now, the PA3WEG.NL server has been hosted on aprs.pa3weg.nl in Delft, while te main server is down due to a faulty harddisk. I've replaced the backup on this server, so everything should be working apart from database driven things. To make matters worse, Delft University of Technology has given the orders to replace the rooftop of the EWI building on which all my antennas are located and decided not to notify me. They've chosen a cheap company employing monkeys to do the job. This results in bended antenna elements, snapped cables, flooded rooms and lots of dust in the ground station room. The University is going to send a pretty large damage claim to the contractor, so I believe they will not make any money from this deal. (and thats a good thing!). Meanwhile. I cannot guarantee any of the offered services, like the aprs server or websdr, to the public. My apologies for this but it is out of my hands.

4th of July 2010

Today, SAQ will transmit on alexanderson day. Transmissions will be at 17.2kHz at 09:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC in CW and can be followed through the websdr

The 09:00 UTC transmission was successful and received S9++ in Delft. An MP3 can be found here
The 12:00 UTC transmission was also successful and received S9++ in Delft. An MP3 can be found here

The harrdisk of the PA3WEG.NL server has crashed. the site now runs on aprs.pa3weg.nl, but you may experience broken links!

14 May 2010, Nordholt antenna uncovered

After functioning 30 years on the roof, the Active nordholt antennas used for the WebSDR receiver failed. One failed during repositioning of the supporting masts, and one did shortly after. If the large RADAR next to the antennas former place acted as lightning "rod" for all these years remains unknown. I opened up the antennas for closer inspection to find one damaged capacitor, looking like it suffered from severe over voltage (lightning?) and no visual defects on the other antenna.

However, this was not the most important finding! After some reverse engineering I found out that both antennas which worked fine for many years are NOT exactly what articles from Ernst Nordholt described. Interestingly enough, there are at least two more transistors, and only one rare FET instead of two!

More info will follow on my Nordholt antenna page!

18 April 2010, WebSDR tuned for Arecibo EME reception

The WebSDR server now temporarily acts as a mirror for the CAMRAS server. More than 140 listeners tuned in to this backup system, as the primary server has a user limit of 170 due to network contraints.

18 April 2010, FUNCube, WebSDR and VLF reception

I finally got the two VLF antennas off the roof. TU Delft decided to change the roof lock without notifying all the keyholders. Nice job.... The small Nordholt has been damaged by water ingress. When I opened the case, water was pooring out of it. The larger Nordholt is still closed and glued shut. It will take some time to carefully open and inspect it. Apart from the water damage, the small version also has an exploded tantulum. This might indicate lightning damage. However, the antenna would continue to work without this tantulum cap. Probably lightning is what has caused the reception problems, and the Nordholt finally had to give in to the force of mother nature after working fine for more than 30 years...

While VLF is now out of order, there is one other thing which you could listen to. On the Delft WebSDR there's now a mirror of the CAMRAS WebSDR. This mirror service is provided if the main server would overload.

Funcube news: Last weekend we had the so-called FUNsquare meeting. Its objective was to test the interfaces between several boards and to do an end-to-end system test with all the prototype hardware. The meeting was very successful. please see funcube.org.uk for more info.

14 March 2010, It's been a while

It has been a while since I updated the news section on the website. In the mean time a lot of things happended. I got involved in AMSAT-UKs FUNCube satellite project. Both professional and voluntary. You'll be hearing more about FUNCube soon!. Also, I've bought a new WebSDR server which is now still in Voorburg instead of Delft. The high-samplerate sound cards still don't work for unknown reasons! One of these cards is now testing in another PC at the Delfi-C3 groundstation.

Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that the VLF Nordholt antennas are damaged by either weather or lightning or possibly both. performance has been low lately, and the russian ALPHA beacons are really weak now. Hopefully, things are still fixable after I take the antennas down. This will be quite a lot of work as everything is bolted down with large bolts through the antenna platform.

24 December, SAQ Christmas Transmission

The annual christmas transmission of SAQ was streamed via the WebSDR to 60 users!
The mp3 can be found here and on this temporary mirror
Some statistics:

More info about SAQ and the transmission can be found on The SAQ website

10 December, SAQ broadcasts

The Grimeton radio station, callsign SAQ, transmitted two times today at 08:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC. The signal was received using the WebSDR on 17.2kHz. For this occasion I put two Nordholt antennas on the roof. One is a long version, and one a short version. I'm intrested in the difference. While working on the antenna, I noticed that one of the 30 year old RG-213 cables was dripping water on the connector side, so I've replaced it with a temporary cable.

More than 40 people listened to the broadcasts via the WebSDR, I took a screenshot with 37 people listening.

37 listeners two nordholts

Listen to a recording of the 1600 UTC transmission:
in ogg
in mp3

3 December 2009, Network outages and problems

Once again, All servers located at the Delfi-C3 Ground station are suffering from network outages and all kinds of weird connection problems. My VPN connection keeps on reconnecting and has no route to the WebSDR and APRS hosts. Direct connection has not been possible for some time now. The Delfi-C3 site seems down as well. Hopefully, the problems will be fixed soon and before 10th of Decemer, when SAQ will be transmitting on VLF 17,2kHz again. The WebSDR should be fully operational then...

20 November 2009, Antenna placement problems

After spending considerable time (first request was 24 January 2007) to convince the the owner of the majority of the appartments in my block to let me place an antenna system on the roof, I just got no for an answer. During the next meeting of owners, I hope to convince them the roof is better than fixing brackets on the wall (in sight). Hopefully, they will now agree and still let me place stuff on the roof. To be continued.....

6 November 2009, ITUpSAT 1

Today, I set up some equipment at the Delfi-C3 ground station for the ITUpSAT team. For their packet link they use Microhard radio's. Their own ground station is unable to communicate with ITUpSAT 1, so I've set up some gear for their team member Ertan Ümit to use. He brought his own bidirectional amplifier and a second Microhard radio. These things unfortunately use proprietary protocols. Hopefully, he will establish comms with the satellite and downlink a picture from the on board camera.

21 October 2009, Sumbandilasat tests

Today, sumbandilasats radio amateur transponder and parrot repeater were secretly tested over Delft. After a scheduled mode change to turn them on, we tested the parrot first and after that the transponder. The tests were carried out by Johan Erasmus - ZR1BMD, Wouter Jan Ubbels - PE4WJ and myself (Wouter Weggelaar - PA3WEG). Wouter Jan was at home on his balcony with a hand-held transceiver and a whip antenna. Johan and I were in the Delfi-C3 groundstation. The transponder expects FM narrow on the uplink and is best received FM wide on the downlink. Some more tests are needed to determine the precise audio behaviour. Two recordings made by the primary and backup transceivers can be found here:

Primary recording
Backup recording

Please note that on the primary recording, the receiver was not tuned after parrot repeater operation and therefore is not correctly centered at the rest of the pass.

sumbandila

17 October 2009, JOTACross

This year, Scouting Dirk Duyvel from Alkmaar organised the annual JOTACross, an event for scout troops during the Jamboree On The Air (JOTA). I was the first operator of the station PA3WEG/J and responsible for the radio links used during the cross. All went fine and everyting worked exactly as it should. Read more here (in Dutch). Pictures can be found on http://www.PA3WEG.nl/photos/JOTA2009/

02 October, Swisscube spinrate

At the Delfi-C3 groundstation, I captured audio from Swisscubes downlink. It was transmitting FSK packet at that moment. The recording can be found here. Below is an image of the spinrate analysis. The spin period is now 0.6 seconds for one revolution.

swisscube spinrate

5 September 2009, Fieldday PA6ARC/P

At this very moment, I'm participating in the fieldday contest with the club call PA6ARC/P on all HF bands. Also, I set up the WiFi network to the internet with hardware at hand and an open access point from someone nearby. Don't worry, we kindly asked ;). I hope to work some of the HAM visitors to this site in the HF Fieldday contest.

WiFi in a bag Cows at the gennie

Back to work...

The holidays are over, back to work. After enjoying a week in the forests and on the "veluwe" I'm back in daily reality now. Classes have started, and there is a ton of work at the company. In the mean time I'm still busy on building up the new WebSDR server. So far I have been extremely unlucky with failing hardware, driver compilation problems and even a corrupted distribution ISO. Please bear with me for the moment.

AMSAT UK Colloquium

This year, I attended the colloquium again and gave a presentation about the delfi-c3 mission results. It was great fun to be there and meet up with amateur radio satellite enthusiasts. My presentation is available for download under the delfi-c3 section. Photos can be found in the photo albums.

WebSDR temporary solution

For now I've reconfigured another server as WebSDR. Unfortunately it only has one soundcard. This is a temporarily solution and this server will be replaced by a new WebSDR server still in the works. Please note that the WebSDR is a personal project and I have to do all things in my own spare time.

03 july 2009, WebSDR down

Once again, the harddisk of the WebSDR server failed. I'm now suspecting the IDE controller to be faulty as well. During the coming days I will be building a new WebSDR server

28 june 2009, SAQ on Alexanderson day

Today at 09:00 UTC, SAQ aired for the annual celebration of alexanderson day. The signal was received using the websdr.

saq

A second transmission will take place around 12:00 UTC today. tune in at http://websdr.PA3WEG.nl

27 june 2009, photoalbums updated

During the last couple of weeks I spent some thime looking for a good quality photo album generator program / script / webscript. I did not find something that completely suits my needs, but I'm also too lazy to code something myself. Right now I'm experimenting with Jalbum.

As a result, some of the more recent events have been put into different types of albums. Hopefully everything still works.

Here are the latest albums:
VPK 2009
Fieldday June 2009

1 June 2009, Tropo on 2m

Koen PE1RCW sent me this screenshot of tropo QSOs on the WebSDR. Unfortunately he could not be in his shack so he used the WebSDR to listen to the stations.

tropo

26 May 2009, WebSDR survives severe thunderstorm

In the night following on 25 May, a severe thunderstorm struck large parts of Hollands west coast. The WebSDR was just fine at 85m ASL. Fortunately, all cables are equipped with lightning arrestors and everything is properly grounded. During the lightning storm I captured several screenshots of the WebSDR on which VLF shows interesting propagation efects due to lightning ionizing the air.

screenshot

overload

While inspecting for lightning damage, I retuned the the direct conversion receiver to 2m SSB

19 May 2009, WebSDR on 70cm satellite segment

I have retuned the 2m receiver to the 70cm satellite segment in anticipation of the launch of CP6 from CalPoly. CP6 will transmit a beacon on 437.365 consisting of a CW beacon followed by AFSK data.

18 May 2009, WebSDR on 2m SSB

Today I have returned the Direct Conversion receiver to service and adjusted the local oscillator to 144.340MHz. The 2m receiver can now be used to observe the SSB and beacon segment of the 2m band. This was done because of Es-openings on the 2m band. Enjoy.

8th of May 2009, IP Change

Due to an IP-address change the PA3WEG.NL server was unavailable for some time. This is now fixed and everything should be back to normal. The WebSDR was not affected.

28th of april 2009, Happy birthday Delfi-C3

delfistack delfi stowed delfi and pa3weg

Today Delfi-C3 (DO-64) is in orbit for one year. In this one year we collected many scientific data and had a lot of fun commanding the spacecraft. Radio amateurs have used the linear transponder to communicate with other radio amateurs. Radio Amateurs also forwarded 610578 frames to the database server in Delft. Thanks for that!. The mission already was a success, but this 1 year anniversary adds up to that. I hope I can continue mission operations for a long long time....

You can listen to Delfi-C3 on the websdr

21st of April 2009, WebSDR with high samplerate!

Today I solved the high samplerate sound card puzzle by doing a completely clean OS install and manual recompilation of almost all sound related modules in Linux. The result is 4 bands, of which 2 are 192kHz samplerate, one 96kHz and one 48kHz. Go to http://websdr.PA3WEG.nl and enjoy!

16th of April 2009, Delfi-C3 on television

Approximately 1.5 year ago, the Dutch childrens TV show "Klokhuis" filmed the integration and vibration testing of Delfi-C3. Today, they aired the show. View it here (in dutch)

7th of April 2009, New WebSDR soundcards!

The soundcards came in today. After some downtime to replace the buggy harddisk and a clean install of my favorite OS, the two new soundcards were installed to provide 192kHz sample rate. Unfortunately, I ran into trouble with the drivers. Hopefully I will find a solution in the following month. A big thank you to Chris Verhoeven from Delft University of Technology for sponsoring the sound cards.

2nd of April 2009, ISS school contacts

Today CAMUS school in Viry Châtillon, France, made a contact with ISS around 13:35 UTC in a 87 deg elevation pass of the ISS over france. This contact could be received over large parts of europe on 145.800Mhz. While busy with other things, my tracking program notified me of the pass and I hurried to get the recorder going. I managed to record from qeuestion 7 of the pass untill the end of the contact, question 16. Only the downlink could be received, so you hear only the answers from the ISS. A recording in mp3 format can be found here. Pauses and noise have been cut out. some of the questions asked can be found here

31st of March 2009, SSTV pictures from space

Currently, astronauts on board of the International Space Station (ISS) are transmitting Slow Scan TV (SSTV) pictures to earth. Most pictures are taken by space tourist Charles Simonyi using the on-board VC-H1. I received some of those pictures and put them into the photo album here

ISS sstv ISS sstv

ARDF / Foxhunting

Last Christmas, Wouter Jan PE4WJ, me and my girlfriend Joke participated in the local christmas fox hunting event. Wouter Jan put some pictures and a small report about this on his website here

25th of March 2009, New soundcards ordered

Thanks to Delft University of Technology, I will soon have two high-samplerate 192kHz soundcards. They agreed to sponsor this project and plan to use the receivers in their educational programme to receive Delfi-C3. The cards have been ordered and should be in pretty soon. Hopefully I can permanently expand the WebSDR to 2m and 70cm simultaniously, while still having the "old" soundcards in place for VLF and maybe 2m SSB.

8th of March 2009, worked HB9/PE4WJ/P

Today I worked Wouter-Jan PE4WJ who was QRV during a trip to Switzerland (JN36HM) as HB9/PE4WJ/P. We had a sked on AO-51 around 18:00UTC. After a while I could distinguish his callsing from all the usual CQ without ears. Wouter Jan was operating with abt. 3Watts from his Kenwood TH-F7 into a rubber duck. Amazing what a bit of ground-gain can do! QSL, 5 and 9 from JO22eb

WebSDR back at 2m

Last month I QSYd the receiver back to the Delfi-C3 downlink passband. 2m and VLF are now available

JAXA nanosat launch

The WebSDR now receives part of the 70cm band to be able to receive some of the latest nanosatellites launched by the japanese JAXA. The STARS satellite is received very well.
See some of the doppler-shifting signals of STARS here:
http://www.PA3WEG.nl/websdr/STARS_snapshot1_1024.png
http://www.PA3WEG.nl/websdr/STARS_snapshot2_1024.png
http://www.PA3WEG.nl/websdr/STARS_snapshot3_1024.png
http://www.PA3WEG.nl/websdr/STARS_snapshot4_1024.png

WebSDR downtime

Update:The system is up and running again with a clean install. If the harddisk fails again I'll replace it with a spare one.
Due to file system corruption and possibly a bad hard drive, the WebSDR is down. On Friday the server crashed just after I went for a short vacation. I hope to fix the problem soon.

Reception of SAQ (2)

Wouter-Jan sent me a MP3-recording of SAQ calling CQ, received over the WebSDR. You can listen to it here

WebSDR betatesting (2)

So far betatesting the WebSDR has revealed some minor problems. Overall the system performs very well and I will continue to test it during the coming months. Pieter-Tjerk (PA3FWM) has provided me with support and updates for which I'm very grateful. Thanks! Also, some new hardware was discussed with Wouter Jan PE4WJ and Koen PE1RCW, so stay tuned for info!

25th of December 2008, Reception of SAQ

On the 24th of December, The Alexanderson machine transmitter located at grimeton, Sweden, was received in Delft. For this reception I set up a VLF receiving station consisting of a Nordholt active VLF antenna directly connected to the sound card. The VLF information was then processed by the WebSDR software, allowing people all over the world to tune in. This worked very well and the transmission of SAQ -the callsign of the tranmitter- was a RST of 599 in Delft.
spectrum

20th of November 2008, WebSDR betatesting

During the coming months I will be testing the WebSDR software written by Pieter-Tjerk de Boer (PA3FWM). The software will be beta-tested by a select group of individuals before being released to the general public. Wouter Jan Ubbels (PE4WJ) developed and built the Quadrature Direct Conversion Receiver used for this beta-testing. By clicking on WebSDR in the menu you will be taken to the WebSDR interface. **Please note: The server port number may be changed, bookmark this site instead!** Also check out the other receivers on www.websdr.org Enjoy listening!

Holiday Pictures

Pictures of our holiday to Limburg 2008 are here (text in dutch)

7th of May 2008, Delfi-C3 is alive!

roof tracking

From left to right: Wouter Weggelaar (PA3WEG), Wouter Jan Ubbels (PE4WJ) and Gerard Aalbers (no call yet) (source: Delfi-C3 Photo Weblog)

Delfi-C3 received its OSCAR-designator: DO-64!

I hope that Delfi-C3 will live a long life and provide many amateur radio operators with "the satellite experience"

19th of December 2007, Conditions on VHF/UHF

On December 19th 2007, there were incredible good DX conditions for VHF/UHF, and so I went to the Delft University of Technology Goundstation to do some DX-ing!. Wouter-Jan Ubbels PE4WJ was already there working a lot of stations. Incredible how good the conditions were! After just a few times CQ, I already had a small pile-up. Wouter-Jan was woring on 2m while I was working on 70cm. After a while we switched bands and so on...

Below are the Grid plots of the QSOs made on 2 (upper) and 70 (lower)

map 2 meters map 70 cm

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