search

IgrikXD / WSPR-beacon

A small hardware device for transmitting WSPR messages based on the SI5351 IC which uses GPS for transmission time synchronization and automatic QTH locator calculation.
https://oshwlab.com/igrikxd/wspr-beacon
GNU General Public License v3.0
63 stars 3 forks source link

Documentatuon of its *range* capabilities is needed... #1

Closed davidbuzz closed 2 months ago

davidbuzz commented 3 months ago

Eg, it was recieved by a wspr reciever X km away when conneted to X antenna and transmitting on frequency X

IgrikXD commented 3 months ago

Eg, it was recieved by a wspr reciever X km away when conneted to X antenna and transmitting on frequency X

Such documentation is completely uninformative. With the same antenna and on the same frequency, two different people can get completely different results. Why is that? This may be due to:

  1. Different geographic locations of the two different transmitting beacons and their varying distances from the WSPR receivers;
  2. Differences in transmission times (propagation in some bands depends on the time of day);
  3. Differences in antenna setup - the same antenna can be tuned differently and installed in completely different conditions (one is in an open field outside the city, the other in an urban area);
  4. Differences in output amplifier settings;
  5. Differences in the filters used;

Adding such information is only relevant as a report from a specific user, with a description of the equipment used and the transmission conditions. I could conduct such tests, but their results would not guarantee that another user would be able to reproduce the same results.

However, I like your idea, and I will consider the possibility of adding a separate table with reports on the device's performance from real users in the future. Changes to such a table could be made via a Pull Request. If you have ideas for an alternative implementation, I would be happy to consider them!

davidbuzz commented 3 months ago

Personally, I'm basically just trying to understand wether, for a given setup, I should expect 10meters range, 100meters range, 1kmrange, 10km range , 100km range. :-)

IgrikXD commented 3 months ago

Personally, I'm basically just trying to understand wether, for a given setup, I should expect 10meters range, 100meters range, 1kmrange, 10km range , 100km range. :-)

I plan to conduct field tests outside the city soon on the 7 and 14 MHz bands. Once I have the results, I will definitely share them! I think I will add an additional table of the obtained results to the repository.

IgrikXD commented 2 months ago

Device test report added: https://github.com/IgrikXD/WSPR-beacon/blob/master/Device-test-report.md