sdr, week 32: a bench baseline, taken before the antenna

Small week here, but it’s the start of something I want to do properly.

The receiver got measured with no antenna attached. This sounds like a non-experiment and it’s the opposite: it’s the only way to get a baseline. Once an antenna is on there, every subsequent number is the radio and the antenna and the environment, and there is no way to separate them retroactively. So: characterise the bare device first, with tooling that can re-run the same measurements and verify them rather than a one-off session and a screenshot.

That verification tooling is the actual deliverable. A number I can’t reproduce next month isn’t a measurement, it’s an anecdote.

Also written up this week: the satellite and drone reception projects, as a plan rather than a result. Nothing received yet.

The write-up of the bench characterisation is going to be this blog’s first real article, rather than a logbook line — there are numbers and a method and it deserves more than a paragraph.