FUNcube Dongle at the Martlesham Microwave Round Table

Folks,

I was lucky enough to be asked to do a talk at the Martlesham Microwave Round Table today at BT’s Adastral Park Research Centre, where most of the FUNcube satellite team met for the weekend for a serious bunch of tests and some excellent results that I am sure will appear very soon on http://www.funcube.org.uk. The end result was that we did a full end-end test of commanding the satellite (albeit sitting on the bench!) and receiving the downlink, both telemetry and voice, successfully with the FUNcube Dongle.

But what a reception the Dongle received! I have to say I am deeply humbled, and, just like last week at Kempton, I just wish I’d had a ton of them ready to sell.

During the talk, I did a Doppler Demo. Next time you see me, ask for a repeat, it might not be quite what you were expecting…

Richard G8JVM, if you are reading the blog, I left you a reply, apologies for the delay, I’d thought that your question had already been answered elsewhere on the blog shortly afterwards.

Also the G8??? who I chatted to directly after the talk about certification, if you are reading please get in touch. Many thanks!

All in all a great weekend – except for one thing. Three of the four units I built on Thursday night were a nightmare to get working. A delivery of solder paste was late so I used some old stuff that I’ve had in the fridge for at least five years. BIG MISTAKE! It might have looked great when applied, but I had many, many shorts under the QFNs and even one 0402 resistor. That took about 3 hours to fix all three boards. Cough, don’t want to be doing that on a batch of 100…

Howard