Receiving the Es'Hail-2/QO-100 geostationary satellite

Es'Hail-2 geostationary satellite (credit: Es'hailSat)

The main purpose of the new geostationary satellite Es'Hail-2 is to provide television services to the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to commercial services, Es'hail 2 includes two linear transponders for amateur radio; one with a bandwidth of 250 kHz and another one with 8 MHz. The uplink for both transponders is 2.4 GHz; and downlink is on 10.45 GHz.

Es'Hail-2 is called QO-100 in the radio amateur world (i.e. Qatar Oscar 100). Service for radio amateurs was opened on 14-February-2019. The linear narrow-band transponder has been busy since then. Two beacons indicate the upper and lower limit of the passband.

Es'Hail-2 Narrowband Linear transponder:

•  2400.050 -  2400.300 MHz Uplink
• 10489.550 - 10489.800 MHz Downlink

Es'hail-2 footprint.

The footprint of Es'Hail-2 covers half of the world. That huge pattern offers new opportunities for many hams: DX can now be worked without erecting big HF-antennas. A satellite dish on the balcony is all you need.

My RX set-up is shown below. It is simple and cheap while still providing a taste of satellite DX. The Win 10 computer runs SDR#

Receive chain at OZ1BXM

The satellite dish is Triax TD78 (offset, 70 cm wide, 78 cm high). The LNB is Maximum ST-11 (single port) with PLL and 25 MHz crystal oscillator.

Offset dish with LNB.

Bias T for 12 V DC.

RTL-SDR dongle V.3

The narrow-band transponder can be monitored via this web-SDR: https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/

73 from OZ1BXM Lars
Webpage: oz1bxm.dk