Rainscatter

I put up a simple Sky (ver 1) 80cm offset dish and a octagon PLL LNA. I cannot hear an 10 GHz beacons under normal conditions. Perhaps partly because the dish is currently only 1m from the floor.y

Then, during an October rainstorm (3/10/25) I noticed a signal on the waterfall! This was incredibly exciting. It looks like a beacon: a "broadband" data section and a narrow CW section which repeat in turn. Any tweak do the dish made the signal worse, hampered by this being the temporary mast with no rotator! Best signal was at ~160 degrees. But I was not sure what frequency it was on. I switched on my Adret frequency synthesiser to 942.63 MHz. The synth has has a GPSDO 10 MHz reference. The output of the synth goes to a microwave diode and the 11th harmonic is 10368.93 MHz.

Once the synth had warmed up, I tweaked the SDRs frequency scale to align it with the harmonic. Something was still off as the signal appeared to be GB3MHZ which I know is QRT.

I used the SDR to record the raw output, and played it back until I could read the beacon's callsign, GB3KBQ.

GB3KBQ Taunton 113 Miles 205 degrees, on the left. The 11th harmonic of the synth on the right. You can see the synth warming up, and then a step as I calibrated the frequency scale of the SDR.

The signal is scattering off a rain cell to the south east.

I'm pleased that this is a new RX record for M0CWX on 10 GHz, and enocuraged that there's scope to have the dish higher. Still need to work on a better frequency reference, there's obviously somthing still wrong.

Update: I'd done the maths wrong. With the correct positioning of my marker the GB3KBQ would be in the correct place on the waterfall. I needed more like 25 ppm shift.