Kitz Forum
Chat => Tech Chat => Topic started by: Imagine. on October 27, 2008, 10:11:26 PM
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Evening all.
I have recently had my latest crazy idea of something to build. I want to build a home-made radar sytem to track metallic objects wether they're in the sky or on land. I have done quite a lot of research and I have a time span of 2weeks free to work in. Firstly I was wandering is this illegal to track these devices. I know it shouldn't affect any aircraft or transport as my device would just appear as a little blip on dopplar radar systems.
Thanks to all who spare the precious time to respond to the goings on in my eccentric mind :) :D
*EDIT* I found a guide to how Radar systems work and I think I am going to attempt a multistatic radar system which is basically a small network or transmitters and recievers i believe :)
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/673-slides-passive-radar.pdf
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Sorry Im not going to be any help since I dont know anything much about radar.. hopefully someone else does.
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Firstly I think you have too much time on your hands. ;)
An interesting task to set yourself but it raises quite a few questions.
Regarding RADAR and aircraft, you must remember that all commercial aircraft and a lot of larger private aeroplanes are fitted with a Transponder that is triggered to transmit the aircraft's squawk code when it is hit by a RADAR beam.
Your 'rogue' RADAR could cause some problems to these transponders.
http://academy.ivao.aero/node/49
A word with an airport RADAR sevice engineer or an aircraft avionics engineer would probably come up with some information about the legality of your idea and if it would impact on aircraft equipment.
dave
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Your location would indicate that you have several VERY busy airports in your vicinity, so do your legality checks very carefully and do not rely on hearsay. The link that you show looks to be in the wild American outbacks with very little that RADAR would bother.
dave
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I think your right there dave I currently live in London so it might do some damage to aircraft as you say I will be creating a "rogue" radar which in turn could do some damage and I was just considering ordering a daughterboard to connect all my antennaes up to I currently prepared 2 tx antenna's to broadcast my signal and 2 rx to receive. But one problem is I've read somewhere that if one of my tx antenna's broadcasts a "rogue" signal at a higher or lower frequency than usual it could have a jamming effect on an aircraft dopplar system. I think I'm going to do some more research and make sure I got it right.
PS. I have all this available time because it's half term from college. :graduate:
PPS. Also you could end up "painting" the metallic device :no:
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Imagine
I think you would have your work cut out making a viable system even if it were legal. My radar experience is nearly 60 years out of date but the laws of physics don't change. The radars I worked on had peak pulse powers of 1 megawatt or more fed into a 20 foot odd diameter dish to get enormous aerial gain and echoes were received with a very low noise receiver. You could do the receiver bit more easily today with the advances in semiconductors but the high power transmitter is a different story. That's why then we used magnetrons. You could cannabalise a microwave cooker I suppose but it would be difficult. I admire your enthusiasm but I don't think it's possible for the man in the street. And the threat to the safety of civil aviation is very real.
As an old electronics experimenter I would not want to curb your enthusiasm but I would try to find a different project. How about building a SONAR/ASDIC which uses the same principles of echo location but through the water. There should be no public safety hazard and the ultrasonic transponders are easily available.
Tony
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My inbuilt radar system must have just gone on the blink, because I just opened this post. >:D
However, to transmit or receive, you are first of all having to get a license to do so.
I think other than that, everything else has been covered.
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/me used to design military radar/ESM/ECM systems
What you are proposing is unfortunately totally illegal in the UK. Nothing to do with actually tracking targets but more to do with transmitting unlicensed signals on restricted bands. The unlicensed bands are generally so full of noise that you'd run into problems (easily if not cheaply fixed) and there are still maximum ERP limits too
Magnetrons are still the transmission source of choice for most commercial radars and with them comes some fairly high dc voltages, usually requiring a bit of inverter design - hence some largish caps.
On the receiver side you can in fact discriminate signals well below the noise floor which will be inherent in any RF design.
A more practical (if not cheap) design would be to cobble together a couple of RF amps, a DIFM (digital instantaneous frequency measurement) unit and a few interface components so the box could talk to a PC. Then write a bit of code to display the raw output on the PC in a prettier format. You'd need a radome and some waveguide too. With that you ought to be able to see emitters and to some extent track them as well. Eg you could probably track commercial aircraft via the rad-alt and IFF systems.
Transmitting microwaves at moderate to high power levels (>1kW) is generally not a good idea unless you know what you're doing. I wouldn't want to live next door to someone doing what you propose ;)
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Ahh well that radar idea is a no go.
I know this may sound childish but I'm going to try make rockets either that or make a little boat out of two motors I have that spin upto 10,000 rpm. :)
If decide to make the rockets they will most likely be water propelled not the explosive kind :graduate:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/telescope/Rocketweb/Launcher.htm
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Interesting when you consider the main issue which comes up on strings to do with broadband issues, snr.
We're bathed in emf . It's amazing how half the stuff we have actualy manages to work
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It's amazing how half the stuff we have actualy manages to work
Too true Ezzer if not for the great electrical pioneers of the 20th and 19th century the 21st century wouldn't be what it is.
PS. I started work on a Water rocket launcher I borrowed some pipes and some connectors off my dad who happens to be a plumber and all the adequate tools and hopefully I can get it up and running before the week is out ;D
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I can see you becoming a Scientist !. ;)
Regards Michael (ex Research scientist ).
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I can see you becoming a Scientist !. ;)
Regards Michael (ex Research scientist ).
:graduate: I'm actually looking into doing Aerospace engineering and probably joining the RAF but thats in a few years time :) For now it's water rockets and home-made games consoles ;D
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:graduate: I'm actually looking into doing Aerospace engineering and probably joining the RAF but thats in a few years time :) For now it's water rockets and home-made games consoles ;D
Good luck with "doing Aerospace engineering and probably joining the RAF" .
Re . "For now it's water rockets and home-made games consoles ;D" At your age I was into :- Home made fireworks / rockets, Short wave Radio (Radio hams ), electric things, making high voltages (4 inch long sparks ) also in to engines (building a generator that ran off gas or paraffin ) and most of this took place in my parents greenhouse I had taken over ;)
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and most of this took place in my parents greenhouse I had taken over ;)
:lol: most of my experiments take place in my room or on the front balcony of my house :) and how did you make fireworks if I may ask *MONEY-SAVING-IDEA* ;)
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Making fireworks might not be such a good idea... they might suspect you of being a terrorist.... but you could go far.
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Making fireworks might not be such a good idea... they might suspect you of being a terrorist.... but you could go far.
By far do you mean Guantanamo Bay ?? :D
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Not exactly, but given the nature of explosives such as gunpowder you could go quite far.
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At least he would go with a Bang :D
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I used to mess about with :-X lets just all it very rapid and energetic diy chemistry. Wouldn't recomend it particuarly in todays climate.
Most stupid thing I did was got something to react with a something else (don;t think it would be a good idea to give the recipe on this site , the germans ditched this combo as too unreliable and too vigerous during WW2) , on my desk in my room :flamer:
Desk got a big burned hole, there's still burn holes on the landing floor boards at my parents house. filled the house with smoke. don't know which was the more violent reaction. the 2ft roaring purple flame o my desk or my mum :-[
Mind you a friend tried some thing once. Ever seen a mole cough? :no: this sort of thing is just too risky
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Ever seen a mole cough? :no:
Classic :lol: :lol: