Today – 19th October 2026 – I finally reached 100 DXCC confirmed via satellite.
This is the map from Cloudlog:
Kategorier
100 confirmed satellite DXCC
Kategori: Amateur Radio
Blogs and posts about my amateur radio and satellite projects. Most posts are in english.
Kategorier
HF antenna summer 2026
After my 80 meter HF loop antenna (SkyLoop) broke during high winds in 2025, aprox 30 meters (not sure exact) of the loop antenna still is up and can be used as a random long wire antenna.
Around 30 meter long it should not be a half wave on any of the most used ham radio HF bands.
Construction of a 1:9 UNUN according to the drawings you can find everywhere:
SWR measured with a 500 ohm resistor:
And the mounting according to this:
Wire -> UNUN -> RT-100 remote tuner -> RF Choke -> Coax to IC-705
Two counterpoises connected to GND at the RT-100. You can see a green wire under the RT-100, that is the first one. Later I added a shorter one (286 cm) for the 12 meter band as it was not possible to tune that band. After this I can now also tune it.
This is the RF-choke (the small white plastic box under the RT-100 tuner). It is water protected with hot glue.
Today (7 Mars 2026) I reached 100 DXCC stations worked via satellite but only 89 is confirmed via LoTW as this date.
Kategorier
Active SAW Filter LNA 435 MHz
This is my measurement of the low cost filtered LNA with SAW filter for 435 MHz. It got it from AliExpress (link).
I used 20dB + 10dB (=30 dB) attenuators and calibrated my NanoVNA for 380 MHz to 510 MHz.
As you can see below the LNA performance well. Gain is aprox 23 dB (exact acoording to specification) and the bandwidth is aprox 15 MHz (a little bit more then the specification of 10 MHz BW).
I was curious how the RTL-SDR v4 would perform against the IC-705 during one hour of FT8 receiving so I set up and did a little test. The setup:
- One hour RX on the 20 meter HF band FT8 section
- Antenna tuned random longwire
- HF signal was split according to the image below, but I did not use the first stage ”AMP” and no LNA from the RXout from the SDRSwitch.
- SDR software = SDR Console
- Same bandwidth was used in the IC-705 and SDR Console
- Two (2) instances of WSJT-X Improved running on the same PC, calibrated to the same RX dB level
- Both instances reporting to PskReporter
Result after one hour RX
Transmitters reported in PskReporter:
– IC-705: 323 transmitters
– RTL-SDR v4: 323 transmitters
Top distance IC-705:
Top distance RTL-SDR v4:
Distance chart IC-705:
Distance chart RTL-SDR v4:
WSJT-X view IC-705:
WSJT-X view RTL-SDR v4:
Kategorier
UNUN for HF longwire
After my 80 meter HF loop antenna (SkyLoop) broke during high winds in 2025, aprox 30 meters of the loop antenna still is up and can be used as a random long wire antenna.
In Januari 2026 I connected an UNUN (DIY – maybe a 1:49, not sure…) to be able to tune the wire on all HF bands with my remote auto tuner RT-100.
I also added two counterpoise wires about 8 meters long to help reduce some common mode current on the coax and add better tuning possibility.
This is the NanoVNA SWR plot before the RT-100 tuner. The overall impedance is low so it should be better to use a different UNUN winding. But that will be some other time…
Kategorier
UHF LNA for SatNOGS
Oktober 2025
Time to upgrade my UHF SatNOGS station with 435 MHz bandpass filter and LNA. These are the items I use from AliExpress:
Also read this interesting post about low cost LNAs.
Installation and testing
Some pictures from the installation and measuring:
Some more installation images
Roof mounting
