[amsat-bb] Re: AMSAT Operating Areas (OA's)

[Tony Langdon]

At 03:47 PM 1/30/2008, Nate Duehr wrote:

>Oh, I dunno Tony -- I've heard some doofuses rag-chewing on AO-51 over
>the U.S. when ten other stations were semi-patiently waiting during
>certain passes.  It especially seems to happen during the really GOOD
>passes folks are waiting for (for whatever reason... some rare guy in
>the middle of nowhere, or a pass that has the right angles for a
>possible DX shot).

Obviously the LID factor is alive and well over there.  Here, the 
main ham problem is the newcomer attempting to work the sats with 
their base station vertical, fed by 10m or more of RG-213.  Since 
most of the sats are in Mode J, this inevitably results in an 
alligator that wipes out whoever is on the uplink and can't hear a 
thing.  If I could hear such stations direct, I'd take them to a 
simplex frequency and give them some pointers, but the odds of them 
being close enough aren't good.  On a couple of occasions, these 
newcomers rolled up for the next pass with their HTs and worked a 
couple of stations! :)

73 de VK3JED
http://vkradio.com