pe1rah, portable satellite station - oh1sa

PE1RAH Portable Satellite Station of 4

PE1RAH, Portable Satellite Station My portable station is special designed for using during an back-pack travel. The total station (TRX, battery, antenna, etc) weights only 12kg, and is small enough to fit in an travellers backpack, together with clothes and other things for travelling. In the first place the station only was capable of working all analog satellites on 2m and 70cm. During my backpack travel through Europe, together with ON1DLL, we made many satellite contacts from every country we visited. The used satellites were FO20, FO29, UO-14, AO-27 and RS12/13. Below: An picture of my 2m/70cm portable (backpack) station.

The station equipment is an FT290 (2m all mode) and an FT790 (70cm all mode). The transcievers alone have only 2W on 2m and 1W on 70cm. To get more power output additional power amplifiers were needed. Normally these are external units, but to save space and extra weight I have re-designed the PCB circuits and made the final amplifiers inside the transcievers.

At the left : FT290 with internal 20W PA module. At the right: FT790 with internal 10W PA module.


The antenna to work via the satellites is an self made 2m/70cm handheld OSCAR antenna. It is also designed to be light weigth and compact to transport inside the backpack.

To get acces to AO40 at my next backpack travel, I needed to include an 13cm downlink. The main problem was the antenna. It had to be small enough to fit in my backpack, and light weight to be not overloaded with weight, and it has to get as maximum gain as possible. After many antenna designs I finally succeed in making two dish antennas, one inflatable and another foldable. The foldable dish antenna is faster to get opperational, and this is why I choose this version as my portable AO40 dish antenna. Below an picture of my portable AO40 dish antennas:


The foldable dish reflector is made of two polyethylene layers with aluminium foil between it. All three layers are sewed together to get an strong and foldable contruction. The polyethylene layers protect the aluminium foil at the inside, and it can be tighten with little force inside the PVC circle (yellow coloured outer circle) to give it an flat surface. The 70cm uplink antenna is mounted in front of the dish. The 70cm antenna does not use the dish reflector, but it does hold the 13cm patch antenna in the middle of the dish feed point. To get the 13cm path antenna exectly in the middle the 70cm yagi antenna is slightly out of centre. Camping tent rops are used to keep the yagi on its place (easy for transport ). The total station in AO40 mode can be seen below:

This picture is taken at the RTA (Radio Treffen Arcen) event in South East Netherlands. During this event I gave an life satellite demonstration to the local (none-satellite) amateurs during the flea-market and I could make several contacts via AO40. The used convertor is an low noise Kuhne downconvertor (MKU 24 OSCAR), and it get power supply via coax. The power supply is an 12V/7Ah battery which can be charged with an 220V to 12V unit, or by an flexible UNISOLAR solar panel. The station takes only 300mA in receive mode (both trx turned on) what gives me a long time to be qrv before the battery gives up.


Below an picture of the antennas ready for transport:

At the right side the dish antenna is folded up, with the circle parts (yellow) at the right beside it. On the left side the 70cm elements are inside the towel, and at the right of it the 2m and 70cm gamma matches. Beside the gamma matches an 10m dipole can be seen, with the 13cm patch antenna below it (not visible). More to the right the boom parts, and 2m elements can be seen. The complete bag can be rolled up and tighten under my backpack for leaving to the next destination More information about my station and projects can be found at my webpage. 73 de PE1RAH, William Leijenaar AX25 : pe1rah@dk0mwx.#nrw.deu.eu email : [email protected] webpage : http://www.qsl.net/pe1rah

pe1rah, portable satellite station - oh1sa

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