Testing recording amateur satellite radio connections / 2015-06-24

The weather is finally getting better and some people really would like me to demonstrate satellite QSO's. So I need to get active again and make those contacts. One thing I wanted to improve was the recording of contacts. When I use the FT-857 radio with computer control I can record everything but I need lots of wires and equipment. I also want to record in a more 'lightweight' setup, with a handheld radio (or two for full duplex).

So I dug up an older 3.5mm headphone splitter and used my iRiver ifp-795 in line-in recording mode to record the incoming audio while hearing it at the same time via headphones.

Today I tested recording the audio from the Wouxun KG-UVD1P. Someone on repeater PI3UTR was nice enough to keep it busy. I had a reasonable recording, it had distortion. Next test is on a pass of the SO-50 satellite.

Update: I had a low pass (about 30 degrees elevation maximum) and I noticed the cable between the radio (2.5mm mono) and the splitter (3.5mm stereo) was giving an intermittant contact so I resoldered it. Understandig the callsigns in the audio was still a problem, I had to turn up the volume quite high which led to a distorted recording.

And when I leave the iRiver ifp-795 in line-in recording mode it does not shut down after some minutes of inactivity. I have to shut it down by hand or switch to mp3 player mode.