[hpsdr] Odyssey Siren Design

[Tom Clark, K3IO]

Joe -- Good to meet you at SFO; Bob has been bringing up your name a lot
and it was good to put a face to it! As I mentioned off to the side at
the tail-end of Sunday's Suitsat-II meeting, I'd like to suggest the
accommodation of a (hopefully slight) modification.

We learned at the AMSAT meeting from Ian Ashley (ZL1AOX) that the ZL's
are nearing finalization of their first KIWISAT (see
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jpsl/KiwiSAT_index.htm
<http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/%7Ejpsl/KiwiSAT_index.htm>) -- the
satellite is quite similar to our original Microsats and to Echo
(stacked trays to make a 25-ish cm cube). It includes a 30 kHz wide
analog Mode-B (UHF -> VHF) transponder. The transponder has been on the
air in ZL for some time and has produced QSOs over a 200+ km terrestrial
path. It's IF properties are set by the 30 kHz 21.4 MHz xtal filter they
already purchased.

I spent some time discussing with Ian the idea of including an
ODYSSEY-like SDX as an alternative, parallel signal path to their
existing analog transponder; he indicate he would carry the idea back to
Kiwi-land. IMHO, it is a marriage made in heaven!

Of course, the use of ODYSSEY would mean that the QSD/QSE has to be
pushed to a new 2x higher frequency, but otherwise the present design
seems a perfect match. Please do all you can to not preclude the
possibility of supporting IFs other than 10.7 MHz. Also, I wonder if you
can yet state the desired IF signal levels on both TX & RX (my gut
feeling was ~0 dBm, but that's because one milliwatt is as good as another).

73, Tom