Direction-Finding With Help From The Steam Deck

Direction-finding, or fox hunting, is a popular action in ham radio circles where a team of men and women armed with radios attempt to track down a broadcasting resource. Apart from getting a hobby for amateurs, it’s also a essential tool in the belt of regulators who are trying to track down violators of the air space. There are a lot of ways to determine out the precise area of a radio transmission, but this 1 manages to pull it off utilizing both equally a boat and a Steam Deck, each and every armed with a computer software-outlined radio.

This undertaking comes to us from [Aaron] who is properly recognized in the novice radio circles for his SDR-focused Linux distribution named DragonOS which has all the resources desired for a high-quality SDR knowledge, in this scenario KrakenSDR and DF Aggregator. He’s loaded anything up on a Steam Deck and remaining that in a safe site on the shore of a lake, although he carries 2nd device with the same application with him on a boat. With the two devices listening for a unique signal, he’s ready to promptly zero in on his buddy on the shore who is broadcasting on the 70 cm band many thanks to the support of all of these program offers.

Although ham radio is not often regarded for becoming a youthful and interesting action, the introduction of program-defined radio and other digital modes appear to be shaking issues up in that earth. Certainly rushing around a lake on a boat is exciting on its possess as very well, and a fox hunt like this can be carried out with a thing as smaller and easy as a Raspberry Pi as well.