The UK Radio Astronomy Association was established in 2008 as a registered charity (registration no 1123866).
UKRAA’s objectives are to promote the science of radio astronomy and all branches of radio astronomical research.
UKRAA is a not for profit business. Any surplus income funds the development of new products and our outreach activities. To keep our prices low UKRAA relies on the contributions of volunteers. We need more volunteers who can contribute in these areas of expertise:
- Precision wood working to make up antenna kits and assembled antennas.
- Machining and mechanical assembly to make up the enclosures.
- Electronic assembly both through-hole and surface mount components.
- Software development.
- Digital and analogue circuit design and PCB layout experience.
- IT and Website support.
- Writers for articles and manuals Stock control, book keeping and customer service.
Please contact me at
UKRAA is pleased to announce that a new assembled version of the E-field Active Antenna Amplifier Kit is available for purchase. Three versions of the kit are available to purchase from our online shop:
- An SMD component kit comprising the PCB and all SMD components can be purchased here from our online store.
- An assembled module with the SMD components mounted and tested can be purchased here from our online store.
- A fully assembled module with the RF and power connectors mounted can be purchased here from our online store.
This kit won the Construction category at the RSGB Construction Competition 2016 and its usefulness was highlighted by John Rogers and David Lauder at this year's RSGB convention RFI Clinic.
In addition, one of UKRAA’s Trustees has looked at how to produce a simple low cost enclosure for the antenna and a short note on the E-Field probe Antenna Housing is available to download.
We have added to our bookshop the third edition of Dr Gerrit Verschuur's excellent book on the history and future of radio astronomy: 'The Invisible Universe - The Story of Radio Astronomy'.
Buy from our online store
Magnetometer Range
The UKRAA Magnetometer is a sensitive instrument for measuring changes in the Earth's magnetic field. The unit was designed by John Cook and uses a Honeywell magneto-resistive IC as the sensor. The instrument is a 2-axis magnetometer measuring changes in the X&Z direction on one channel and the Y direction on the other channel. The unit is not intended for use in “compass” mode where actual field vectors are measured. It is intended for the board to mounted so that the face of the printed circuit board is normal to the local field. This mechanical geometric nulling allows a very high gain amplifier to be used resulting in an extremely sensitive instrument.
The unit exports its readings as a pair of voltages in the 0 to 5Volt range, and some form of recorder will be needed to store and display these. A number of external Analogue to Digital converters are available which may be employed for this purpose. The on board PIC controller also digitises the readings which are also made available via an industry standard I2C bus.
UKRAA also offers a micro-controller board and software to control the range setting and collect measurements from the Magnetometer via the I2C bus. Controller has sufficient on board RAM to store several days readings. The controller communicates with a PC via a serial link to download stored data for display and analysis using the Starbase program. Starbase is an open source multi-platform Observatory management program which is available free and a download facility is available on this site. The unit and the software is supported UKRAA and by B.A.A Radio Astronomy Group members.
Buy from our online store.