SatNOGS antenna rotator. Part 4. The frame.

The frame is the skeleton of the SatNOGS rotator. And today I have started building it. Yesterday I received the cut T-slot 20x20, ball bearings 6008ZZ, hidden construction corners and T-nuts. Also, I have almost all the plastic parts printed (except ones I have planned to do of nylon).

SatNOGS antenna rotator. Part 3. STLs.

It seems that the antenna rotator is a pretty interesting thing. At least after I have shared links to articles in the Facebook. People started asking me about materials, files, my plans, and so on. This short third part is just about the place containing the STL files required to build your own copy of the SatNOGS rotator.

SatNOGS antenna rotator. Part 2. Materials and pricing.

Once the first article about the antenna rotator was issued I started receiving questions about the materials required for building the rotator as well as about the total price. I had explored resources here and there and prepared a short list of parts required on each step of the rotator assembly. The list describes the parts required to build a single cube (out of two). As far as there should be two identical cubes, the total number of materials and resources will be as twice as bigger.

SatNOGS antenna rotator. Part 1. Overview.

Something about one year ago I fell ill. Nothing serious, but satellites. I passed all steps, including reading forums, watching Youtube, building receiving (and, later, transmitting) antenna, and, finally, reaching the Space. Unfortunately, my mind has some disadvantage - I can't memorize the callsign right after I heard it. Therefore to be successful I have to write everything down. In order to be able to do this, I have to have my hands free of the antenna. This means I need the antenna rotator.

My ToDo List. 3D printer.

Yesterday I decided to shorten the ToDo list by one element. As far as I need some plastic parts to be printer the choice was obvious. Sure, it was my 3D printer having problems with the heating bed. As far as the printer is a homemade one, its quality is not outstanding. However, I successfully have spent about one kg of the ABS plastic.

LiIon 12V battery. Schematic and model of housing.

Sometimes you go to the flea market and spend some amount of money on some scrap. After you get back home you start thinking of what to do with all these things you have bought. The same happened to me: I have bought batteries for some unknown portable device. There were four 3.7V 3100 mAh cells. Unfortunately one of them was completely dead. Fortunately, three cells is enough for building the pretty powerful yet small rechargeable battery providing 12 volts.

My ToDo List.

Recently I realized I have too many unfinished works. Too many. It's sad but true - the number of interesting (to me) things is increasing on a constant basis but the amount of time I have for the hobby is still limited to 24 hours per day. Below is a comparatively full list of my works I have to finish in the future. Some of them will be postponed, some even for an indefinite period of time, but I hope to finish the most of them soon or later. I won't sort the list by any criteria, this is just an enumeration of works I can recall at the moment.

Powerful dummy load. Step 2. Assembling.

Some time ago I started building the powerful dummy load (50 Ohms, 250 watts). Although I had had everything I need to start working on it, I didn't start the building because I was thinking I need the box I could hide the dummy load into. Recently I have bought the power amplifier so that I can't postpone anymore. I have some spare time (about an hour) so that I decided to start immediately.

KL 144 by RM Italy. The first meeting.

Today I became an owner of the nice thing - the power amplifier KL 144 designed and produced by RM Italy. I found it by the Internet so that I had no guarantee of its working state. The price was only 25 bucks so that I should not lose a lot.

Chebyshev BPF. PCB design #2.

After some short discussion (or rather asking questions) the design of the PCB has been changed. Now all coils are placed onto the line, capacitors are located symmetrically in respect to coils. The second view of the PCB is following.