[Laser] Field Day laser activity

Kerry Banke kbanke at qualcomm.com
Mon Jun 28 10:54:42 EDT 2004


Chuck, WB65IGP and I did a few hour demo with our laser communicators 
Saturday evening at the Palomar Radio Club FD site here in San Diego. The 
site was surrounded by trees so we just shot a few hundred feet  across a 
grassy area. No DX but did get some interest.  We did full duplex voice, 
PSK31 and SSTV over the link.  We have been using the same hardware for a 
number of years ( used for 15 mile demos) and I think  we're about to make 
a change.  We just  found a quantity of some good pin 
diode  optical  detectors that respond well up to 500 MHz when biased at 
about 40V.  Tests over the weekend show that these combined with the cheap 
laser pointers we use should make a nice demo optical link to pass  signals 
up through about 500 MHz.  The plan is to have an SMA connector on the Tx 
unit that will accept up to 0dBm RF and have a connector on the Rx side 
that delivers the  signal on the other side of the link.  This should 
provide a whole host of new demo opportunities including sending RF 
modulated TV  audio /video (Maybe channel 3), signals from low power 
transceivers up through 70 cm ( I did the 70 cm test across the garage last 
night), and maybe an Ethernet link.

Any other FD  laser activities to report out there?

  - Kerry N6IZW -



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