List,
Having been active in ham radio from almost the beguiling
of the Amateur radio during the hey day of AMSAT-OSCAR
program, I can tell you that the thrill of hearing your own return
signal from the bird is a thrill every time you do it. It never ceased
to get my heartbeat up 10 points.
I ran the astounding power out into a ground plain antenna of 10 whole watts
on the two meter uplink and with the down link on the 10 meter band.
My very first contact was on AO6, otherwise called OSCAR 6 to JA1JRK
in Japan while I was in Anchorage, Alaska. We had all of about 6 minutes of
mutual access to the bird.
I didn't see how I might become an astronaught, so this was the next best
thing.
My best contact was when I visited a friend's Shack. He was into moonbounce.
This is where you transmit a 70 cm SSB signal into a 24 foot dish aimed at
the moon
and you heard your return 2.4 seconds later. It always gave me the willies
because
the signal had a warble to it that was unreal.
I did some work when AO7 was launched. If the two birds were spaced just
right,
you could uplink on AO6 and AO7 would get the downlink and retransmit on
it's
downlink. This would allow you a much further distance to talk that either
one alone.
One mystery did crop up. There was an occasion of a reverse doplar.
I never got to hear it directly, but I listened to the recorded tapes of the
inverted
dopplar. When the train approaches the whistle rises in pitch and as it
departs, the whistle lowers in pitch. The same applies to a radio wave, but
as the bird made a south to north pass over (get ready for it) the Bermuda
triangle. the doplar was inverted no less than 7 or 8 passes during several
days.. The cause was never identified.
THAT was creepy.
Ah, the good ol' days.
It's late so I'll save another adventure re AO7's death and resurection 20
plus years later for retelling then.
73's de Pete KL7GNW-IMCA 1733
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