On Sep 23, 2011, at 11:18 AM, Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) wrote: > I hope you are able to be on VO-52 on Saturday, 22 October, when I am doing > demonstrations on FM and SSB satellites from a hamfest in Tucson AZ that > morning. If there are FM passes available that morning, I will be on them - > as well as the VO-52 passes. At the hamfests I have operated from, the SSB > demonstrations usually attract the larger crowds. When they see it does not > take much more equipment to work SSB than FM via satellite, that turns out > to be a pleasant surprise for the audiences. In the morning should be a 9:40ish am pass local time for me. So I might be on it sipping my coffee :). The big difference that you can show is, that the linear birds are not like a zoo at times (except for the 5 am passes during the weekends on AO-51) and you can have a real QSO for the entire length of the pass. Granted you may only collect one grid and you may already have that one but it's simply an addition.
> I use a pair of FT-817NDs (or sometimes I substitute a TH-F6A in place of the > FT-817ND I use to receive the downlinks) and a "store bought antenna" (an > Elk log periodic) for my all-mode satellite station. This station, except for > the Elk, fits in an old laptop bag that has seen tens of thousands of miles > of travel in the past couple of years around North America and - recently - > Australia. My current antenna setup is a AR-22 TV rotor with a 5 ele 2M and a 10 ele 70cm at 30 deg fixed elevation both horizontal polarized. Total cost approx. $200 plus cables. Next project will be to build a 2nd IOio and phase them together 90 deg off to see if that will help with the fading issue (mostly on FO-29) vs buying or building a complex RHCP/LHCP switchable setup. My IOio beats your Arrow or Elk in terms of price by leaps :). But then again it doesn't look as nice. 73 Mike K5TRI _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
