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Is it possible to detect the presence of a satellite ground station in my area?

Also can I detect the uplink using a simple Software-Defined Radio (SDR)?

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To detect a satellite ground station by detecting the uplink radio signal is not that easy. A satellite ground station is build usually with a high gain narrow beam directional antenna. To detect the emission of such an antenna you need either a detector very close to the narrow beam or very close to the satellite ground station antenna. A detector at other places might not get enough radiated power of the signal in question.

A simple SDR (software-defined radio) with a frequency range well below 8 GHz might be too slow for a uplink signal using the X-band in the range 7.25 GHz to 7.75 GHz (Space to Earth) and 7.9 GHz to 8.4 GHz (Earth to Space).

If the Ka, K and Ku bands are used in the range between 12 and 40 GHz, a SDR with only 8 GHz is not useful.

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