This is off-topic and not a criticism, my apologies if it is not well received. I am not sure if I worded this correctly.
It helps to have some kind of introduction if we want to share our work with a wider audience.
For this kind of topic I think that the people who already know what radio telescopes and radio astronomy are would be able to find this kind of information elsewhere if they wanted, but people like me who don't are "scared away" by the information because there is no introduction to the topic.
>The goal of this project is to enable everyone to discover that our Milky Way Galaxy surrounds
us
The quote is from the purpose on the first page. All of it really is at a DIY level were you get enough information to actually do something, but you will still hit snags. So you might be right that it is not aimed people who do not know the basics. I do not see the weakness in the writing so maybe you could explain what you would need?
I can chime in regarding some weaknesses of the linked document.
I approach this as a highly technical person, programmer, electronics tinkerer, and someone who has been actively exploring SDR for over a year now, with RPis and a few different SDR hardware and software types.
I've become quite familiar with how "terrestrial" radio works from this period of experimentation, and I think most people who have ever used any form of analogue radio would not have much issue figuring out what's going on just by playing with an SDR and a length of wire as an antenna.
I opened this document expecting some introduction as to how I might get started with radio astronomy. After reading the whole thing through, I'm left rather in the dark about what results I would be seeing if I were to go to the trouble of following the instructions and getting it running;
- the document in parts seems to be a bit back to front. some of the concepts are explained after the instructions to implement them
- it's full of technical jargon which is not explained at all
- it doesn't explain how to interpret any of the captured data beyond "this small bump represents the milky way" - what else, for example could be observed with this equipment, and how does that differ from what's shown?
- it offers no help as to how to figure out what's going on if your results don't match what's shown in the document
- it offers no indication of where to go after carrying out just the one observation shown
- there's clearly some text missing in the part about the analyse scripts and what they are supposed to do
I could go on, but the above would be my main gripes with it; the result of which has left me with a feeling that this has taught me nothing about radio astronomy and no desire to build the antenna or use the software.
Thank you! For me this was enough to ignite an interest in seeing the Milky Way, with what seems like a weekend or two of work or ordering parts. Where to to after this is a very good question, but a friend who bought one of the better rx/tx SDR units tells me there is always some thing new to do in that land.
It helps to have some kind of introduction if we want to share our work with a wider audience. For this kind of topic I think that the people who already know what radio telescopes and radio astronomy are would be able to find this kind of information elsewhere if they wanted, but people like me who don't are "scared away" by the information because there is no introduction to the topic.