On January 22, 2022, an automated tracking system for weather balloons, also called radiosondes, was commissioned at the Coti-Chiavari site.The set consists of a Raspberry 3, a USB RTL SDR, a 403 MHz band filter and an omnidirectional antenna.Everything was installed in a rack drawer in the main bay of the site.The first tests are encouraging, the receiver decodes the frames emitted by the radiosondes as soon as they are launched and until the loss of the signal which varies according to the direction taken by the balloon
Un nouveau relais situé à côté de Valle-di-Campoloro JN42SI30 a été raccordé au réseau TKNET. Les fréquences sont 430,0375 MHz en émission et 439,4375 MHz en réception, les deux avec un TCS de 88,5 Hz.
Les premiers rapports d'écoute et essais confirment une bonne couverture sur une grande partie de la plaine orientale, notamment la T10.
Côté technique : Ce relais est le premier qui utilise la nouvelle carte d'interface TKNET. La puissance d'émission est de 7 Watts, le récepteur a une excellente sensibilité mais est prévu pour un espacement de canaux de 12,5 kHz. Les stations souhaitant utiliser le relais doivent donc limiter leur excursion de fréquence afin de ne pas souffrir de distorsion...
On March 30, 2021, TK1BI & TK5EP spent a few hours on our "Punta" site. A new Procom CXL2 antenna with a gain of 3 dB was installed on the new tower. This one is bigger and more stable than it was used to install this heavier antenna. The old antenna gave some signs of weakness and showed reduced coverage.
The pylon was also earthed and a new connection to the TKNET network has been done. It remains to connect the grouns of the building in order to have equipotentiality of the different earths and to finish laying the cable trays.
A new version of the USB audio VoIP interface to drive our repeaters has been build by Patrick TK5EP. It carries a CM119A chip that takes care of the USB communication, the VoIP conversion and the I/O ports. Read his article on his Web page Here a 3D view on this interface board.
The storms that hit Corsica in november/december 2019 didn't leave any survival chance to our setup !
Many trees are broken and fell on the road, even very large and old ones. All antennas suffered. The yagi boom bent, 2 elements are broken and flew about 50 meters away, the 40/80m dipole was ripped off. Half of the weather station is broken and was found in the bush. The anemometer exploded and the weather vane is broken...
