[amsat-bb] XW-1 Western North America 15Dec2009 1702z

[John Papay]

XW-1 was again heard over western North America
with an excellent signal.  The new keps provided
by Nigel G8IFF/W8IFF were used for Object A and
found to be spot on.  I set SatPC32 for automatic
operation with the TS2000 in the CW mode and the
computer clock synchronized with NIST.  I never
touched the radio dial or the antennas during the
entire pass and as you will hear on the recording,
the CW tone never changed.  The TS2000 was updating
the frequency every second.

Again I found polarization shifts but the bird did best
on Left Hand during most of the pass.  This was a 22 degree
pass for me to the west.

One of the three letter code groups changes on every string of CW
starting with BJ1SA XW XW etc and ending with XW XW. For example,
the 3 letter groups for some successive transmissions were:
TNE TDT AAE ATE 4VE A6E TBT 4VE T6E ATE.  Every other code group
in the string stayed the same, at least during this pass.

I started the recording late.  It is much better than my first
recording with the older keps on the amsat webpge.

http://www.papays.com/XW-1_15Dec2009_170842z.mp3

Let's hope we can start using the v/u transponders for voice/cw
soon.

Thanks again to all who were involved with this satellite.
It is operating very well.

73,
John K8YSE EN91dh