HB9BLA Creates World Record on QO 100 with ESP32 WiFi Chip!

Few days back I had posted about checking the WiFi signals from an ESP32 development board which I had bought recently. I never imagined that this is a chip capable of sending signals to the Qatar Oscar 100 Amateur Radio satellite located at 36,000 km in a Geostationary Orbit! That world record has been created by HB9BLA couple of days back. Normally the WiFi signals from ESP32 has a range of just below 50m. HB9BLA used a software hack which allowed him to make ESP32 work on the CW part of the QO-100 bandplan.

Usually ESP32 works only above the QO-100 frequencies, in the band allotted for WiFi. He used his 1.2m dish antenna which has a gain of 25dB on the uplink frequency of QO-100. That could amplify the effect of the 100mW power output from ESP32 to an effective power of 30W. That way he could reach up to QO-100 and hear his CW signals on the downlink.