[amsat-bb] S-band on Eagle

[yokshs@sbcglobal.net]

Hi,

I've been following the thread about Eagle, and like many others I am sad to 
hear that S-band will not fly. I do
look forward to working S-band on P3E, and hope the Eagle team will 
reconsider, and fly an S transmitter, even
if it is considered a backup or emergency transmitter.

I understand why the team wants to drop it, but I have a feeling that if we 
DON'T fly it, we'll wish that we had. Sort of
putting all the eggs in one basket to depend on U/v to work for the life of 
the bird, isn't it? Remember AO-40 - I never
heard the S1 TX, but aren't we all glad there were two S transmitters 
aboard?

I DO look forward to working U/v on Eagle, but I doubt that my budget will 
allow experimenting with new
modes such as C-band anytime soon. With this in mind, as far as I'm 
concerned, Eagle will be a U/v bird only.

While I won't argue that the 2.4 GHz spectrum is a 'sewer' in some areas, 
I've only had serious QRM on one occasion. The
radar pulses or spread spectrum noise was cured by my radio's Noise Blanker.

One evening while copying AO-40, the bird's signal dropped completely off 
the S-meter. It was like my dish had fallen off the
roof or something! Seems a neighbor down the street got a new 2.4 GHz analog 
cordless telephone, and (you guessed it)
she was the dreaded full duty-cycle type - a high-school age girl!

Her phone must have broken or was returned to the store soon after (WHEW!) 
I never got a chance to DF it, as I only heard it the one time, but was in 
absolute
horror at the possibility of losing my S-band RX. For those of you that 
doubt a non-licensed device can swamp your new downconverter, believe me,
my AIDC 3731 could hear nothing else.

On a related subject, seems like I read somewhere that some C-band 
experimenters were considering using
s-band units for the final conversion from 5 GHz? In other words, the C-band 
converter would only need to
convert from 5 GHz to 2 GHz, and let the surplus s-band units do the rest? 
Anyone know any more about this
subject?

Another use for S-band converters might be for RF linking purposes? A small 
transmitter and helix or dish at each end should work well
for control links or linking repeater sites maybe?

73,

Kyle Yoksh
KØKN
Olathe, Kansas
Amsat # 35249
VUCC Satellite # 150