[amsat-bb] Re: Help with CIV and IC-910H

[John Kopala]

Ron,

George has it exactly right.  You don't need to fiddle with the radio except 
to tune up and down the passband to see if other people are on the bird.

First select the satellite you want to access by clicking on one of the 
letters for the satellites you have configured on your SATPC32 display.  The 
selected satellite will be highlighted on the display.  Grey letters 
represent no configured satellite.

In the upper left of the SATPC32 display, click on the C.  It changes to C+ 
to show CAT tracking in activated.  Watch the radio when you do this.  It 
should respond by going into satellite mode and tuning to the frequencies 
shown in SATPC32.  Sometimes I have to repeat this once or twice before the 
radio and SATPC32 sync up.  Just check the frequency on the radio to verify 
that it has change to that displayed by the program.

Next click on CAT in the menu bar.  This opens the CAT Tuning display 
window.  Here you can tweek the uplink and downlink frequencies if the 
downlink is too high or too low.  It will need some adjustment depending on 
the satellite and the radio.  With satellites with multiple modes, you can 
change modes here by just clicking on the appropriate line.  Once the 
downlink sounds reasonable, you are good to go.  You may have to tweek 
things a little on high passes.  I've noticed the doppler seems to get off a 
little.  On the FM birds, you don't have to touch the radio.  On the SSB 
birds, you can tune for other operators.  You will also have to tune to 
follow stations that are not using doppler control.  If both stations have 
doppler control, you shouldn't have to do much of anything once you have 
found another station and started a QSO.

If you change satellites, you must close and reopen the CAT box.

John Kopala
N7JK
------------------------------

With SatPC32, you won't need to set memories on the rig...  in the 
Doppler.sqf file, you need to have an entry for VO-52 that looks like this:

VO-52,145900,435250.3,USB,LSB,REV,0,0

This tells your radio the relationship between the uplink and downlink 
frequencies, what modes to use, etc., for that particular satellite.  You 
can either open Doppler.sqf in Notepad (it's in the folder where you 
installed SatPC32, usually C:/Program Files/SatPC32), or from the Auxiliary 
Files section under the "?" option on the menu bar.  Make sure that you not 
only have matched the addresses for your radio in the Setup menu, but the 
baudrate aand COM port as well, and put in a CAT delay value of around 60 or 
so.  Then when you select VO-52 as the active satellite and press the "C" 
button in the upper left of the display, the program should automatically 
switch the radio to Satellite mode, LSB on the uplink, USB on the downlink, 
and set the frequencies to the values in the Doppler.sqf file.  (Don't 
forget to turn the squelch knob, which is the RF Gain control in SSB mode, 
UP)  You can then tune up or down from there manually, and the uplink VFO 
will track your changes to t!
 he downlink.

Once you can hear yourself on the downlink, follow the instructions in the 
file FAQ.htm, in the section titled "AO-40 Operation," to fine-tune your 
uplink to match your downlink (every radio is slightly different).

You should then be good to go!

73,

George, KA3HSW


-----Original Message-----
>From: Ronald Nutter <rnutter at networkref.com>
>Sent: Apr 2, 2008 9:31 AM
>To: Bruce <snyderb at cox.net>
>Cc: amsat-bb at amsat.org
>Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Help with CIV and IC-910H
>
>Bruce:
>
>Think I found part of the problem.  I glossed over the CIV addressing.
>I am used to applications that "know" the default CIV addressing, so I
>hadnt looked at it.  Although I hadnt changed mine, I looked at the
>settings in my 910H and changed the settings in SatPC32.  I can now see
>there some indication of RIG control.  Have to figure out now how to get
>things to work.
>
>I dont use the satellite function in the radio, I put the vhf frequency
>in one memory and uhf in the other.  I shift the receive channel into
>the slave part of the radio (lower display) and put the transmit in the
>higher display.
>
>I will continue to look at the docs for SatPC but would appreciate any
>pointers you can give on how you use SatPC32 with the SSB birds (i.e.
>setting up the radio, etc).
>
>Thanks,
>Ron
------------------------------