ARLA/CLUSTER: Contactos a longa distancia com o Raspberry Pi

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Raspberry Pi long distance contact challenge

In SARLNews of 7 April radio amateurs in South Africa were challenged
to try their hand at covering distance with Milliwatt power into the
antenna using a Raspberry Pi.

This was in response to Eddie Bennett, G3ZJO, of Northampton in the
United Kingdom who used the 10 milliWatt of RF that can be generated
from the Raspberry Pi computer board and was heard at over 2000 km on
the 7 MHz band.

The Raspberry Pi board can be made to operate as a WSPR mode
transmitter covering Low, High and VHF frequencies up to 250 MHz.
G3ZJO connected the board via a low pass filter to a dipole for the 7
and 14 MHz bands.

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer board that plugs into
a TV and a keyboard. The Raspberry Pi Model A and Model B boards are
supplied as board only, and come without operating system, SD card,
power supply, keyboard, case or cables.

SARL Elmer, Jaco le Roux, ZS6PX, responded to the challenge.
He received reports from several stations; the furthest was some 900
km from ZS2CX.

He said that when he heard about the challenge on SARLNews he was
immediately interested and ordered a Raspberry Pi. "When I received
the unit, I loaded a new SD card with Raspbian Wheezy and followed the
instruction that I found on the Web. I could not believe that 10mW
could travel that far"

Jaco received the book prize.

 Fonte: The South African Radio League