R8600 IC-R8600 L-Band Monitoring

[srletend]

I'm considering the purchase of an IC-R8600. A few specific questions related to L-band satellite monitoring. Currently I use an Airspy R2 with SDR# for Jaero and STD-C. Also using a HackRF with iridium-toolkit on a linux box. Both with an active L-band patch antenna powered via bias tee.

My questions:

1. Can the R8600 provide bias tee power to an active antenna? I believe the answer is no. If that's the case, do you need an external power inserter? Would this work with the R8600?

2. How well suited is the R8600 for picking up an Inmarsat-C NCS (e.g., AOR-E at 1541.45000) signal and feeding a decoder such as scytale-C? I'm thinking the 12khz IF output would be fed to the decoder. Should I expect to see better performance than the Airspy R2/SDR# method?

3. Can the R8600 be used with iridium toolkit? Currently that process takes in 10mhz bandwidth from the HackRF and sorts out the packets. Would I need to use the I/Q output from the R8600? Could the 10.7mhz IF output be used?

I know these are very specific questions and I'd have a bunch of fun figuring out the answers on my own--I just don't want to spend what it takes to learn the R8600 is not well suited to the type of L-band monitoring I want to do...

Thanks in advance for any insight in satellite monitoring with the R8600!

 

[gldavis]

A lot of views, but no answers. I have no answer either, but it would be nice if someone did. My 8600 is in the mail on its way to me.

 

[dlwtrunked]

I'm considering the purchase of an IC-R8600. A few specific questions related to L-band satellite monitoring. Currently I use an Airspy R2 with SDR# for Jaero and STD-C. Also using a HackRF with iridium-toolkit on a linux box. Both with an active L-band patch antenna powered via bias tee.

My questions:

1. Can the R8600 provide bias tee power to an active antenna? I believe the answer is no. If that's the case, do you need an external power inserter? Would this work with the R8600?

2. How well suited is the R8600 for picking up an Inmarsat-C NCS (e.g., AOR-E at 1541.45000) signal and feeding a decoder such as scytale-C? I'm thinking the 12khz IF output would be fed to the decoder. Should I expect to see better performance than the Airspy R2/SDR# method?

3. Can the R8600 be used with iridium toolkit? Currently that process takes in 10mhz bandwidth from the HackRF and sorts out the packets. Would I need to use the I/Q output from the R8600? Could the 10.7mhz IF output be used?

I know these are very specific questions and I'd have a bunch of fun figuring out the answers on my own--I just don't want to spend what it takes to learn the R8600 is not well suited to the type of L-band monitoring I want to do...

Thanks in advance for any insight in satellite monitoring with the R8600!

I have both an R8600 and AirSpy R2 (and also a HackRF 1). I prefer using the AirSpy; but I do not use scytale-C but another better program using VBcable. I do not see how you can use the 10.7 MHz IF output for looking at Iridium--what are you going to feed it into? Although I like the R8600, I would use the others for what you are talking about.

 

[srletend]

Thanks for the replies. I've done more digging since my original questions. Here's a summary of some of the things I've found:

1. No bias tee power from the 8600--a power inserter would need to be used.
2. The IF output from the 8600 is not the same as a discriminator tap and folks have had varying success using the IF output to feed various decoding programs. There are some good threads on the 8600 groups.io forum with more info.
3. My question about the 10.7MHZ IF output was a misplaced--I now understand this is an IF output and can't be used the same way as 10mhz bandwidth I/Q output.

So, for my purposes, I'm thinking the IF outputs may work for some of the digital decoding I want to do--I will need to test it out. For iridium, I think I would need to capture the I/Q output for analysis. I don't know if the 5M I/Q bandwidth will be enough (the HackRF captures 10M bandwidth).

With all that said, even without the answers to my original questions, I received my 8600 on earlier this week and am happily playing around with it.

I have not yet attached the L-band active patch antenna with a power inserter, so I am still curious about how well it will pick up the 1545 Inmarsat signals. Would love to hear of any experiences with 8600 users and L-band reception.

 

[gldavis]

Looking thru the manual ( I know, real Hams don't use the manual), I read that there are a couple jacks that can carry the Discriminator tap. I'm hoping that will work for external decoders. I should have my R8600 today.

 

[kruser]

Looking thru the manual ( I know, real Hams don't use the manual), I read that there are a couple jacks that can carry the Discriminator tap. I'm hoping that will work for external decoders. I should have my R8600 today.

There are no true baseband (discriminator) outputs available on the 8600 period.
The jacks you mentioned can pass audio level (filtered) or pure IF audio but riding on a 12 kHz frequency.

Join the 8600 groups at groups.io and you will find the info you need to make the 8600 work as a discriminator tapped radio for decoding various formats including DMR using DSD+.

 

[gldavis]

My goof. Reading the manual, I mistook "demodulated" for discriminator. Teach me to read a manual before coffee.
My main use of the audio output (at this time) would have been to decode the control channel on trunk systems.

 

[kruser]

I do this but using a very clunky method.
I have an old Icom PCR-1000 that does have a discriminator output. It was originally for packet radio data but with an easy mod, any filtering left at the packet data port could be removed.

So I use the 10.7 MHz IF output from one of my R8600's and feed that to the PCR1000 which is set to 10.7 MHz. I then monitor the PCR1000's discriminator output feeding into DSD+ or whatever discriminator decoder I'm using. It's a goofy setup but does work and allows me to do my main tuning with the R8600.

 

[gldavis]

I also have an old PCR-1000. I haven't used it in more than a decade. I wonder if it will work on a Windoze 10 laptop? Once I parlay with the 8600, I'll give the PCR a try.
Thank-you for the info/suggestion.

 

[escortz28]

I also have an old PCR-1000. I haven't used it in more than a decade. I wonder if it will work on a Windoze 10 laptop? Once I parlay with the 8600, I'll give the PCR a try.
Thank-you for the info/suggestion.

The ICOM software for the PCR-1000 will install and run on Win10 (have it on a Win10 64bit latest version)

 

[gldavis]

Good to know. Thanks.