[amsat-bb] Re: AO-16 back on and very strong

[w4upd]

Will do Drew. Especially if I hear him on AO-16. I knew it had a good 
receive, but wow, the transmit was good so that I could hear it on my 
crummy verticals. I really do need to get the arrays back up that have 
been down since the storms of '04' and I'm finding that a couple of 
birds it would be very beneficial (especially for AO-7). Again, I took 
my power into a homebrew 1/4 ground plane down to 5 watts and was still 
hearing quite a signal. My goal is to try and use this bird as much as I 
can until it goes away.

Again Drew, thanks for your and other's efforts on this. It really makes 
operating the birds fun. Especially when those of us are too lazy to put 
the better antenna up or back up, hi.

Andrew Glasbrenner wrote:
> My pleasure Reid. Up until today I had been optimistic about maybe 
> eeking some sort of continuing operation out of AO-16, but this pass 
> has sort of killed that. We had been getting an orbit or two between 
> shutdowns the last week or so, which led me to think if we could 
> enable it every orbit we'd extend operations. Right now the satellite 
> is in about 79% sun, by this summer that will drop to 68%. 
> Illumination equals heat, and our reset problem is temperature 
> dependent. The temperatures have already dropped enough that the 
> satellite reset twice during that pass; the time you heard, and about 
> 30 seconds after I first turned it on it did the same.
>
> So...we'll have to see if even a large effort will result in any sort 
> of usable operations as we approach that 68% number.
>
> 73, Drew KO4MA
> AMSAT-NA VP Operations
>
> PS Be sure to thank Mark, N8MH, when you hear him on the air. He is 
> usually the one that turns the satellite on in the afternoons, not me!
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "w4upd" <updwrb at bristor-assoc.com>
> To: "Amsat-Bb at Amsat. Org" <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 3:58 PM
> Subject: [amsat-bb] AO-16 back on and very strong
>
>
>> Thanks to the control station turning AO-16 back on. Heard the sequence
>> and then the bird was really kicking butt on its signal. I lowered my
>> power to 5 watts and was still banging in and this with some very "bad"
>> verticals that I have difficulty with on the other birds. Heard to
>> satellite quit during the pass and then obviously, control station came
>> back and turned it on again. Other then some "junk" only a couple of
>> stations were on.
>>
>> I had a choice of AO-16 or SO-50. No brainer, stuck with AO-16.
>> Good work fellows,
>>
>> 73, Reid, W4UPD
>>
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>