Successful 481THz non line-of-sight test

Posted by: "G3XBM" rogerlapthorn@...   rlapthorn

Sun Feb 12, 2012 12:33 pm (PST)

This evening I tried my first proper non line-of-sight "cloudbounce" test using my recently built QRP (about 0.7W input) optical TX and RX. I managed 10dB S/N in a 0.67Hz bandwidth over a 3.6km path using Spectran to decode the QRSS3 signal. The red LED beacon was neither visible by eye or audible by ear at the receiving site which was "over the hill" from the transmitter back home.

There is a lot more information on my blog and website. See http://g3xbm-qrp.blogspot.com/ and http://www.g3xbm.co.uk .

Optical communications is quite fascinating and by using the same weak signal techniques I've been using at VLF it looks like some quite interesting non line-of-sight paths will be workable.

73s
Roger G3XBM