it’s cheaper than launching and maintaining your bird, they start at 100 million US. Before you’ve paid to put it any sort of orbit! Not even the Likes of BskyB own their own.
Well done to the team for performing an awesome record on. For my own academic interest, what was your Tx power?
If it’s up there already and you can rent it without having to shell out a fortune, why not?
I’m just an active participant, not a team member.
@Syed I believe this question was directed at your team.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
Off the top of my head, I believe EIRP is 53 dBW.
53dBw …wow (typo?) 53dBm / 200W ?
That must be ERP, including the antenna gain and coax losses.
–Konrad, WA4OSH
EIRP is antenna gain plus RF power. I think in this case the actual RF power that is uplinking is about 1W.
Yes, you have to subtract coax and connector losses. At 12 GHz, these become significant. But, yes, 1w transmitter power or about 30dBm and another 23dB net antenna gain to make 53dBm ERP / 200W does make sense. Sorry for being a nit-pick. 
–Konrad, WA4OSH
I wonder if the LoRa transceiver plays a role in power savings here. How much RF power would have been required had the dreamcatcher not used LoRa?
We use the full power allotted to us; 1 MHz PEB (power equivalent bandwidth). I guess it’s about 34 dBW hitting the ground. Using LoRa was not meant to reduce RF power, it was meant to deal with all of the interfering transmitters that the low gain/wide beam width antenna sees.
I see! But what about the uplink? I assume what you stated as 1 W is the uplink from the dreamcatcher right? The number seems very low compared to most satellite terminals… 
Sorry for not clarifying earlier. Our uplinks are almost always from a teleport, with only minimal testing done through small VSATs. VSATs work just fine for LoRa uplinking, but we already have equipment at the teleports, so it’s less to bother with. The reason that the BUC requirements are so small is because the uplink is coming from a 5-meter antenna. I remember one private channel we had that used a 12-meter antenna, which even further reduced the uplink power requirement.
I see, thanks for clarifying. I had the impression that the previously mentioned 1 W uplink was from the dreamcatcher with its LNB. Do you think such implementation would be possible though? E.g. using the dreamcatcher to transmit SOS messages over the same satellite
Yes, it’s definitely possible. By reducing the uplink power level the BUC size is drastically reduced, which can make for a cheaper Ku-band transceiver. $100 is feasible.
To be clear, a Dreamcatcher alone is not sufficient. You still need some way to up convert to 14 GHz.