10GHz update - December 2025

I haven’t been active on 10GHz since the end of August, when I moved the dish to the front garden where I have more moon visibility to the west.

During October and November I moved the transverter and SMPS for the PA from the feedtray into a separate unit which is located under the the feedarm, close to the dish. I also made up some new feedarm supports for the dish as the previous ones were a bit short.

The PA is now a 13W module from Wavepia that I was bench testing for a while and it appears to work well. As part of the rebuild I also added several MODBUS sensors to monitor various voltages, PA current and the transverter. These outputs are fed back to the Arduino sequencer/controller over RS485 and allow me to keep an eye on overall system performance.

At the end of November I recalibrated the dish controller. With no moon visible and the sun low in the sky, I installed a Bullseye LNB on the feedtray and peaked the dish on Astra 1KR telemetry on 11.196 GHz and the QO100 beacon on 10.490 GHz.

On 10 December 2025, I installed the 10 GHz equipment on the dish and ran all the cables back to the shack. It’s a lot better than operating out of a cold garage. At 12:45 UTC, with the sun just clear of the neighbours house I measured 9.2dB of sun noise, very close to EMECalc at 8.94dB.

SFU @ 10 GHz = 392

The following morning moon noise was 0.4dB and DL0SHF between -9 and -7. I worked ON5TA -14/-17 and was called by IZ4BFA -18, but didn’t manage to complete. A bit later I copied EA1IW -14 working SA5IKN and shortly after the moon went behind the trees.