Arbitrary printed circuit board

Different radio projects were realised using passive monitoring of existing RF-sources as well as active monitoring by transmitting RF. The goal of this monitoring was to study the ionospheric propagation by RF-waves.

  • With the advent of SDRs, monitoring with analog radios is more of a historical case. Nevertheless, employing an AOR AR5000 communications receiver for monitoring purposes is described here. The built in RS-232 interface allowed to control the receiver and to read the level of the automatic gain control (agc) representing the received RF-power. The necessary control software was written in PASCAL and can be downloaded freely. Examples of different measuring objectives are given.
  • For the monitoring of the solar eclipse in March 2015 over Europe a software defined radio was used. It was connected to a computer via USB. The computer run the SDR-software and served as recording unit (Spectrum Lab from Wolfgang Büscher).
  • To analyse the influence of coronal mass ejections on the ionosphere with radio amateur equipment, an ICOM IC-7300 transmitter was used. It was connected to a computer via USB. The study was based on periodically transmitted WSPR-beacon signals (WSPR-Software from Joe Taylor). Signal reports from third persons were retrieved from the internet database wsprnet.org. A method is described to make changes in ionospheric conditions in detail visible.