KK6NOW
I hold a general class license, but operate mostly on 2M and 70cm from San Diego and Palm Desert, California using a Yaesu FT-897, Kenwood TM-281A mobile, Yaesu FT-60R handheld, and an AnyTone D878UV handheld. You can often find me off-roading and launching rockets in the SoCal deserts. My primary interest is using Raspberry Pis and SDRs to receive location and telemetry data from satellites, rockets, weather balloons, trains, planes, and automobiles. I operate satNOGS, FoxTelem, radiosonde, and APRS IGate stations at both locations.
Recent Blog Posts
NASA Selects Participants to Track Artemis II Mission
Last August (2025) NASA issued a request for proposals for corporations, organizations and individuals to track and obtain telemetry from the Artemis II mission. On Jan 23, they announced the participants — half were academia, amateur organizations or individuals. This is another example for how citizen scientists can make meaningful contributions to space programs. Details…
New Web-based Satellite Tracker of HAM Sats
The Zenith Satellite Tracker is a free, simple to use, web-based applications for tracking all current satellites that provide satellite communications between amateur radio operators. It contains special features for “rovers” and coordination with “friends”. The “off-line” version enables operation of your station’s radio and rotor. However, unlike other applications, this version requires you to…
Educators Guide to Classroom Satellites Released
At the 2025 AMSAT Space Symposium and Annual General Meeting in Phoenix, Ariz., AMSAT Vice President – Educational Relations Alan Johnston, KU2Y, announced the availability of a draft version of Educators Guide to Using Satellites in the Classroom, a new guide covering AMSAT’s CubeSatSim and other resources available for utilizing satellites in classroom education. Johnston…
Southwest 4FSK Balloon Tracking Network
A group of amateur radio operators operate a network in the Southwest of high-altitude balloon tracking stations. NOAA weather balloons are posted to sondehub.org. Stations are switched to 4FSK mode when tracking amateur balloons. Those are posted to https://amateur.sondehub.org/ Below is a screenshot of all 10 stations tracking a recent launch from Mount Carmel High…
AMSAT AO-7 — The Longest Operating Satellite
The oldest still working satellite in space wasn’t even designed or operated by NASA, USAF, ESA or any other space agency, but was designed and built by Radio Amateurs. Launched in November 1974, it died in 1980 due to a battery failure. Then, it suddenly came alive in 2002 and has been working ever since.…
Real-Time Lightning Maps
Blitzortung.org is a worldwide citizen science network of lightning detectors. A map displaying lightning strikes in real-time can be found at https://www.blitzortung.org/en/live_lightning_maps.php Unlike other lightning maps, this map also shows which detectors reported the strike. Surprisingly, strikes can be detected from halfway around the world. Information about the technology and how you can participate can…
Superknova – Free Online Resource for Learning the Fundamentals of Radio Communications
The U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), and its administrator, Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), have created Superknova, an online educational platform that provides inclusive, equitable access to radio technology learning and training. “Our goal is to broaden participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) by offering no-cost training and education…
HamS.at – Connect with Hams via Satellites
A growing number of satellite rovers are sharing their grid square activations on https://hams.at. By visiting the website, you can determine who will be on what satellite and when. You can also identify the upcoming satellite passes that are accessible from your location. Thanks to AMSAT News Service and Ian Parsons, K5ZM, AMSAT rover page…
HAMS – Send and Receive Morse Code the Easy Way
Preppcomm provides a Morse code decoder / encoder that will work with your existing transceiver. They also offer a low power (1.5 – 3 watt) totally self-contained Morse Code transceiver for 80, 40, and 20 meters. Just add a keyboard, 13.8V power and an appropriate antenna.
Sparkfun Article on Field Testing the Range of LoRa Antennas
Opps! Forgot to publish this. https://www.sparkfun.com/news/5497
ARRL’s Intro to Radio / Learn to Solder Kit
The best way to learn to solder is to use a learn-to-solder project, typically a simple circuit board with 5 to 10 components, well spaced out. Many are blinking light badges. You can find them on Amazon. I’m partial to those offered by SparkFun. The ARRL has a learn-to-solder kit that is actually useful: a…
Inexpensive Radio Astronomy Kit Now Available
Inexpensive radio astronomy kits are now available from NASA’s Radio JOVE Project
What to Contribute to a New Digital Radio Protocol?
M17 Project Seeking Contributors M17 is a new open source VHF digital radio protocol in development as an alternative to those currently available, with freedom in mind. Freedom in the code, protocol, voice codecs, and hardware. The goal is to provide a better option for digital radios in the future. The M17 Working Group is…
SDR Makerspace Conference Videos Are Now Available
SDR Makerspace is an initiative of the European Space Agency and the Libre Space Foundation to support the use of Software Defined Radios for space communications, opening up space communications development to a wide variety of people, organizations and companies. Videos from their recent three day conference are now available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntNa7j8v1JQ&list=PLCzrYL9QmZiSMltB0vP-u2s3Lx7TSlohn Also…
AMSAT Virtual Space Symposium this Saturday Oct 30, 2021
AMSAT’s annual symposium will again be held virtual this year. Members can register on the AMSAT website’s member portal. Non-members can watch the presentation on their YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/RTvcceM7Tz0 Tentative Schedule 9:00am CDT – Opening Remarks 9:15am CDT – 2:00 pm CDT – General Presentations 2:00pm CDT – 3:00 pm CDT – AMSAT Education /…
Reminder: Free AMSAT Symposium On-line This Saturday 10/29
The AMSAT Symposium is on Zoom and YouTube this Saturday, October 30th from 9:00am CDT – 5:00pm CDT (UTC-5). Registration for members is required and is available on AMSAT’s Member Portal, launch.amsat.org. Registration is free and registered attendees will receive a digital copy of the AMSAT Symposium Proceedings, entered into the Symposium prize drawings, and…
Grants available from the ARDC foundation
Amateur Radio Digital Communications is a private foundation with significant ability and desire to support Amateur Radio and digital communication science and technology. They are expected to award more than $6-million in 2021 grants to schools and 501(c)(3) organizations such as radio clubs. Grants have been made for things like educational programs, repeater equipment upgrades,…
Received Norby QSL Card
Today I received a QSL card acknowledging my reception and uploading of data from the Russian cubesat Norby. QSL refers to the Q Code used by amateur radio operators worldwide meaning “acknowledging receipt”. Cubesat operators sometimes issue QSL cards to early receivers of their signals as an incentive to search and monitor those signals.
Signal Identification Guide: SIGIDWIKI.com and Artemis 3
If you ever wanted to identify a strange waveform seen on your SDR program, SIGIDWIKI.com is the place to go. It contains 100’s of example audio files and waterfall images, most recorded by popular SDRs. Artemis 3 is a front end application, sorting signals into categories you can browse. You can read more about it…
LoRa/LoRaWAN video tutorials on YouTube
Robert Lie Mobilefish.com has created a series of 53 video tutorials on YouTube explaining LoRa & LoRaWAN. Most are short (<6 minutes) and well indexed, so you can quickly find topics of interest. Many illustrations and demonstrations of LoRa signals on SDR displays. Highly recommended. Complete playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmL13yqb6OxdeOi97EvI8QeO8o-PqeQ0g He also published documentation and slides…
An Exciting Virtual Balloon Launch by ScienceHeads.org
While checking the status of my Palm Desert balloon tracking station on aprs.fi, I noticed the balloon KM6HCB-11 was traveling overhead. With the help of Google, I discovered it was launched by Science Heads, a Southern California STEM organization for middle and high school students. And I could participate remotely from La Jolla. Because of…
Technical Presentation on EIRSAT-1 Cubesat Available on YouTube
The EIRSAT-1 CubeSat, built by students at University College Dublinis due for launch on the Vega rocket in early 2021. David Murphy,EI9HWB and Fergal Marshall of the EIRSAT-1 team gave a comprehensivetechnical run-through of the satellite’s payload, subsystems andonboard communications. You can watch the entire video presentationat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwyb2rDYBs From an amateur radio and hobbyist point-of-view,…
500 Weather Balloons Tracked to Date
Since July 2020, I’ve used Project Horus’s Radiosonde_auto_rx software running on a dedicated Raspberry Pi with a RTL-SDR to track weather balloons launched daily from the NOAA station in San Diego, CA, US and the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground (Yuma, AZ, US). Tracks are posted in real-time to APRS.FI and HabHub. Radiosondes typically transmit…
Received 2M signal over 840 miles
On 10/29 18:30 PDT, my SatNOGS satellite ground station located in Palm Desert, CA, received an announcement from a ham repeater operating at 145.490 on the edge of the satellite band. The repeater is located on Prospect Hill, near Salem, OR, 1350 KM (840 miles) away. Interestingly, my yagi antenna was pointing straight up at…
AMSAT Virtual Symposium Replay Available on YouTube
The 2020 AMSAT Space Symposium was held via a Zoom Webinar on October 17, 2020. Complete replay available on the AMSAT YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/EHDgrI_w8hY Update on the educational cubesat simulation can be found at 4:15:00.
Decoding LoRa Cubesats
Scott Chapman, K4KDR, @scott23192 & Bob Mattaliano, N6RFM, @n6rfm have recently posted on Twitter details of their success in receiving and decoding LoRa 70cm signals from the NORBY (aka NORBI) cubesat. Fossa Systems has posted code for their Arduino ground station on Github: https://github.com/FOSSASystems/FOSSASAT-1B/blob/master/software/manual_test/GroundStation/GroundStation.ino G4lile0 posted code for a ground station using the Heltec ESP32…
SSTV received from ISS
My Palm Desert SatNOGS station received the above Slow Scan Television (SSTV) from the International Space Station (ISS) on 2020-10-06 03:00 UTC. This is the best of 3 pictures. Complete observation at https://network.satnogs.org/observations/2949326/
2020 Virtual AMSAT Space Symposium – Saturday Oct 17
The 2020 Virtual AMSAT Space Symposium and Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday, October 17th from 9:00am CDT – 5:00pm CDT (UTC -5). Symposium presentations will be a combination of pre-recorded video segments along with a question and answer sessions held via a Zoom meeting. The Symposium will be made available for free…
Fredric Raab 