New Logos created it now has a brand name - FARABRELLA
Buy it here
We have different feeds and attachments:
Farabrella HRPT with Tripod
Farabrella HRPT Basic (without Tripod)
1.5Ghz Inmarsat Feed
2.4Ghz/5.8Ghz Feed
QO100 LNB mount adapter
Phone Mount adapter
It has been an enjoyable few years experimenting with fabric antennas and i'm happy to have been featured on Tech Minds youtube channel this week. I feel very lucky to have this attention from the amsat crowd and I am indeed an amateur just like everyone in the hobby. Making things has always been something which I have delved into to help me learn about things which I find interesting, I come from a tech background, something which I have studied too at university level, my early childhood learning was surrounded by artists, painters & sculptors. Making things with my hands has always been there along the way. I think it was around 2010 when I built my own 3d printer, and in 2016 I built my own cnc router and along with this I learned how to use cad design software to help me come up with answers to ideas in my head; I think it is this early art exposure which made me see the world a bit differently, to look around, to read articles, to hear stories. It was in 2019 when I was sitting thinking about alternatives to aluminium mosquito screen door mesh for antenna building as I felt it was unsuitable due to it not collapsing thus cancelling out portability, being sharp with splinters once cut and trimmed, and only being semi rigid. I was sat one day thinking about alternatives and saw something called RFID Blocking fabric and having not seen it being used in any antenna designs before, my mind considered if it was not just blocking but reflective of radiowaves so I gave it a try and was stunned by it's performance and potential, I knew it was right for me, my discovery was made which led me to my invention which is starting to lead to other amateurs coming up with their own ideas. I might sometimes interpret things in a way which may or may not be on the path of normality. However I learned that it is my interpretation and in art how can that be wrong but for other people to decide.
I have had the pleasure of having buyers of my ideas as varied as aerospace engineers, corporate aerospace seniors, prop departments, youtubers, even hollywood film studios, Sony Pictures, Shinfield, Culver City, Hamburg prop companies, Raytheon, Boeing, Bletchley, King Saud University, and so on, this past few years of fabric exploration.
My designs are forever being adjusted, and my iterations change as I go along. I have experimented with glass fiber poles, aluminium mosquito door mesh, real rain umbrellas, beach balls, lots and lots of different designs. I experimented at the beginning with true parabolic designs, and indeed i still do. But the one design I believe true to myself is the design I sell right now. It is a compromise on manufacturing. As I live in a small humble flat with a cramped backyard shed I use the tools and parts that I have available and I build things to mass produce according to the time I feel I can put into making them and I judge the price by a few rules, postage price, ebay sales cut percentage, international fees, parts purchasing, my time, what i feel it is worth, packaging time, packaging supplies, tools and sundries. That is the way of iphones, cars, sneakers, farming, basic economics. I am not blind to the path I choose in my design, and in my backyard shed I have other designs which I do not sell due to the costs of the list above being too great to do repeatedly, so I choose to release the things I make as a reflection of what I have available. There has been no crowdfunding sought, no wish to deceive, no investment from banks or private investors to help me with machinery or workspace, nor do I have any access to the old university research cash fund. I do what I do in the best way I do. Doo Bee doo doo.
As a further update to my umbrella designs I wish to help the amsat community who have not used one of these antennas, or a fabric antenna, but have attempted to decide that the antenna is a flat circle, or that it is not parabolic in any sense. Some adjectives describing it have been rather well suspicious and I do have knowledge of pernicious activity going on but I have better things to do than wander down that path.
Anyway, here are a few photos of my backyard shed antennas in my backyard shed being made and I present them with a flat bamboo cane sat across horizontally to help show just what shape it is.
And you will find if you want to be more exact about the design it would likely be described as a truncated cone, or conical frustum. And according to antenna design perfectly capable :)
As per the idea that this is flat, shallow or unsuitable I pledge to differ about that, afterall a parabola is in fact just a conic section of a cone and by that definition the parabola owes much to the cone.
Compared to my 1.2m offset dish:
And as per lacking suitable gain, I ask that you read my previous post which has images showing screenshots of it in use and both the swr (db) and peak swr (db) which was actually better than my early parabola design. One of the reasons I chose to add parabolic in the title of the ebay listing is precisely because of that, an ebay listing will only attract buyers who search for certain keywords and by adding the word it will hopefully reach more prospective buyers.
Thanks for reading and who knows if the fabric cone shall become a parabola again (or if it is necessary as I already explored) :)
Also here is an early parabola design iteration with bendy fiberglass poles and sure looks fancy futuristic cad prints but takes a hella time. Feel free to read my past posts for more on that.
Parabolically conical.
Here's a Video of Metop capture process using the fabric folding parabolic antenna, really great signal and locks on for a big pass. It is much easier to capture images than using a traditional big old metal satellite dish which is heavy and difficult to maneuver, witht the fabric parabolic antenna my arm does not ache and I am able to focus more on directional accuracy and also the phone screen giving signal strength feedback:
Hi there, just a short post for some images I have captured using my Fabric Antenna. So far I have had success with:
Inmarsat 1.5Ghz
Meteor HRPT
NOAA HRPT
METOP AHRPT
S-Band HRPT
X-Band QO100
S-Band QO100
I have some other success with other satellites (Globalsat etc) which I don't feel I am ready to share just yet. Anyway here is my antenna invention, i'm very proud of it, and it's great seeing all the diverse supporters who have bought one from me & seeing other people figure out new ways to use conductive fabric for antenna creations.
Here are the images
1) NOAA HRPT (tree cover in my area affects the most northern orbit)
2) METEOR HRPT (Overall a nice big capture all the way down to africa and the Azores in the Atlantic)
3) METOP AHRPT (Capturing & processing this big Metop 6Mbps file using just my mobile phone was so pleasing to see it all work out who knew phones could process like a desktop)
Here we begin outside the house for safety reasons, and we strip off the outer packaging to reveal the individual cells.
Once we have the packaging removed we can see that all the cells are not stuck together and just fanning out. This should make removing of any faulty cells easy. The battery is officially a 6s lithium polymer battery, however when we remove the packaging we reveal 12 cells which are wired as pairs to make a 6s battery. each cell is therefore 8000mah 1s 4.2v, two of these cells in parallel make 1s 4.2v 16000mah. as a 6s battery it gives us 25.2v (6x4.2v) at 16ah.
A typical individual lipo cell albeit in a large capacity.
After inspecting the faulty battery pack I observe that a single cell has a puncture which has somehow sealed itself with leaked lithium. I should consider this a lucky thing as it has decided not to inflate or explode and I was able to remove and isolate the faulty cell from the rest of the pack thus reducing overall potential failure risk. I placed the faulty cell into a lipo safe outdoor container and discharged the cell to zero volts making it inert and safe.
This leaves me with a 5s 16ah lipo battery. Which as yet I am unsure what to use it for. Maybe I will split the cells and make two 5s 8000mah lipo packs, or one 6s 8000mah and one 4s battery.
The battery is safe now that the faulty cell is removed, and I wrapped the pack in kapton tape for added protection.
Some tips:
-Always regularly inspect your lithium batteries for visible damage.
-If there is visible damage remove the battery from indoors and place outside far away from anything which could burn.
-If the cell pack is hot on one side and the lithium charger shows a single cell refusing to charge to 100% then take this as a solid indicator of battery damage.
-If you have confidence in your abilities remove the damaged individual cell as soon as possible to isolate it from the other lithium cells.
-Dispose of the damaged lithium cell by discharging it safely using a battery discharger to make it inert.
I am yet to experience a lithium battery fire and I have over ten years of experience using lithium batteries. However consider this that the older and more used the lithium battery is the more the chance of cell damage, poor condition, poor internal resistance, and therfore higher chance of problems. We are approaching a time where hobbyists are in posession of more and more older batteries which need to be carefully disposed of and there are not the facilities out there to assist with disposal which leaves the responsibility on us the user to find a safe and suitable plan for safe discharging and disposal so perhaps it is time to start your own journey into safe lithium battery disposal now and consider refreshing your old batteries with new.
Thanks for reading.
I decided to build a Lipo discharger this week. Most off the shelf products were expensive and underwhelming for my needs. I am attempting to discharge a 6s 16ah 24v Lithium Polymer battery which has recently had cell issues after 6 years of regular use. Instead of throwing it away carelessly I wanted to empty the battery of all power therefore making it inert.
I have seen some homemade battery dischargers on the internet which use 50w 12v car light bulbs in an array to increase the amps pulled from the battery thus emptying it more quickly. It should light up your space like a lighthouse. These bulbs can be bought for approximately £4 each.
Other options I have considered are Industrial Resistors which are often used in home wind generator setups to help dump the load when the wind is too high and the power generated too great. The power has to go elsewhere so a large capacity resistor can do. Typically a 24v 300w resistor costs around £25.
Another interesting option I thought about was my final idea. I found via the internet that there are super cheap 12v/24v immersion heaters for car vehicle 12v sockets. They are used to heat a cup of water in your vehicle so you can have hot tea or coffee. After a few rudimentary tests I found the immersion heater to draw 220 watts of power without melting the cable or plastic. I found them for sale at £4 each.
So I decided to buy 4 of these DC water heaters:
4 x 220 watts = 880watts of discharge power
The commercial 200 watt lipo discharger is around £70, so we can discharge 4 times higher than this.
I wired the heaters up so that i could have two or four connected to allow variable discharge rates.
I also included an emergency stop button in the event I need to stop the discharging cycle for some reason.
When it is time to discharge the lipo I place the immersion heaters into a glass bowl of water and let them heat the water, it is a plus if boiling point for tea is achieved.
Thanks for reading.
I wanted to see if i could make a working version of the Gatr ball antenna typically used for geostationary satellites, it is often seen at military sales shows and at fancy trade shows, i heard these types of antenna sell for $150,000? Well I thought surely i could do it myself.
I have been making fabric parabolic antennas for a number of years now.
They work really well, I am regularly receiving HRPT and QO100 satellites via software defined radio using this method. Have a look at my ebay listings if you are interested in one. its super lightweight and portable allowing me to receive HRPT satellites one-handed using only a mobile phone.
Anyway I figured why limit myself to this parabola type of antenna, why not try new possibilities. So I have always been interested in the cool looking Gatr ball antenna but because it is difficult to see inside and understand how it works how would it be possible to know what is inside making it all tick.
It was after seeing this image showing the dish that I thought I should give it a chance and see if the fabric for my folding parabolic antenna will work in this scenario.
So i bought myself a nice big beachball, hacked it open and stuck a fabric reflector inside. here was the resulting prototype number 1:
Here you can clearly see a fabric reflector inside and a LNB receiver on the exterior. I used this to test receive QO100 voice signals. To stretch out the reflector i used a number of elastic anchor supports i made and glued inside. Once I had it all fixed in there I closed it up and sealed it so I could inflate the ball.
So onwards I go to a bigger larger version:
This one worked much better. the ball radius was significantly larger than my first one and this improved the receiving signal to a level i could confidently listen to QO100 voice.
Here we can see an example of QO100 reception using the XL ball antenna i built. It works excellently for a beachball ;) I attached tethering lines and weights to secure my antenna in place as the satellite is stationary and not orbiting so i do not have to worry about tracking it.
Transmitting is also possible. I 3D printed a combined tx/rx helical feed/LNB and using Adalm pluto SDR with a power amplifier i was able to transmit test signal.
Overall I am happy with my setup. I achieved my goal of receiving a satellite with a homemade Gatr antenna, and I feel that this was a sucessful experiment.
Further experiments are also possible using the fabric antenna method such as nasa's rovers using UHF collapsible fabric antenna which uses a quadrifiliar helical format. Here on earth we could make LRPT fabric folding helical just like QFH antenna.
If you would like me to make you one please get in touch via my ebay page in the links above.
Thanks for reading.
