20.0°W (Destination) Al Yah 3

I could only find the beacon at 20198.5MHz, not the 20199,5. It was at about 220el 40az from near London but was hard to track as there was a lot of variation in the signal level. I've included some time domain plots to show the variation. Some of it is cyclic but the rate changed over a period of a few minutes. There were also some fast variations of 10-50ms but I am not sure if they were real amplitude variations or an artefact of caused by the modulation. It was hard to keep on frequency as the LNB is not stable to better than a few kHz.

Zitat

Original von hvdh
Finding Ka band beacon for such a fast moving satellite, very impressive!

Thanks. It wasn't moving too fast as it was close to apogee. However, it may be wobbling a bit which could cause the slow variations in level (and confusing me whilst tracking). If it behaves the same as SES-14, it will be hard to track once it gets closer than about 15000km and below 15 degrees elevation.

N2YO tracking link
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=43174

Zitat

Original von s-band
N2YO tracking link
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=43174

I tried to find it again but can not see anything. It should have been at about 40-41E +/-1El.at the times I looked.
I calibrated against Athena Fidus so am confident I was pointing in the correct direction and I could see the "noise" from Mentor 4 the other side (44E). Are the beacons off or have they been switched to a narrower beam? If I managed to find it before, I wonder why I can;t now.

I found it again. It was harder to find than when it was stronger (closer) but moving fast. The 1st beacon I found is no longer on but the 20199.5MHz on is there. The waterfall shows that there is still significant fading at a rate of about 0.01Hz (rolling?). The frequency drift is the LNB wandering.