ADS-B broacast from a crane !

ADS-B plot from https://planefinder.net/

A strange marker shows up on ADS-B plots in the Docklands, near London City Airport. A relevant NOTAM has been issued, indicating that it is a fixed ADS-B beacon on a crane at a construction site:

Q) EGTT/QCBXX/IV/BO /AE /009/999/5130N00001E

A) EGLC

B) 16/01/28 23:59

C) 16/03/12 23:59

E) LOW POWER AUTOMATED DEPENDANT SURVEILLANCE-BROADCAST (ADS-B) TRANSMITTER OPR ON CRANE AT 513030N 0000057E (ROYAL VICTORIA DOCK). EQUIPMENT WILL NOT INTERACT WITH TCAS BUT MAY BE DETECTABLE ON TRAFFIC INFORMATION DEVICES AND DEPICT WITH CALLSIGN CRANE. PILOTS ARE REQUESTED TO IGNORE THIS TRANSMISSION DURING THIS TRIAL.

I believe it is the first time that a Mode-S/ADS-B marker is used in this way. Stay tuned for more info.

UPDATE 2016-05-17: See additional information by Pat Carty in Radio User magazine, 11 (5), May 2016, page 49, ISSN 1748-8117.
 

Meteo FAX on 7100 kHz

Surface analysis for N. Atlantic chart - 2016-01-18

Yesterday afternoon a meteo station started sending meteo charts by FAX on 7100 kHz (this is the USB dial frequency, "white" is on 7101.9 kHz). No station identification is sent but it is believed that it is a military station in the United Kingdom.

Flash and strobo tube data

During the last few days I tried in vain to locate online the base pinout of an octal xenon flash tube type STC150, like the one shown on the picture.  Finally I discovered a discared box of a related but physically different device, a Velleman S106A flash tube.

On the two sides of the card I discovered the pinouts of some flash tubes including the STC150, the associated trigger transformers, plus a small table with some technical data. I upload it here so they are available to anybody interested.

Connection diagrams for flash tubes and trigger transformers

 

Technical data for flash tubes.

The tubes included in this data sheet are the U-style S106A, S8538, S4668 and the octal base STC150.

MX beacon K on 7039.3 kHz

Tonight I heard again after a long time the Letter Beacon (MX) "K" on 7039.3 kHz. This beacon is located in he Russian Far East, possibly near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky according to the IARU Region 1 Monistoring System and the HF underground wiki. While other beacons of this cluster moved out of the 40 m amateur radio band to 7509 kHz, this one remained on its old frequency.

 

LPD RTTY beacon

Today I received a Radiometrix NTX2-434.650-10 LPD transmitter module which I ordered on eBay from mallinson-electrical. I integrated it with an Arduino Uno, a female SMA socket and a 3λ/4 antenna to build a small RTTY beacon. Output power is about 10 mW, consistent with the LPD specification CEPT/ERC Recommendation 70-03.

I programmed the Arduino with a modified version of M0UPU arduino code, which is published on the site of UKHAS. 

Reception of the LPD beacon using fl-digi

I hope some time within the next weeks to make a test transmission from a high location so anybody interested can get some hands-on experience with dl-fldigi reception of balloon signals.

The interesting news is that Radiometrix produces a new version of the transmitter, called NTX2B-FA, which is frequency programmable, so it can be tuned to more appropriate amateur radio frequencies near 432.8 MHz.