[amsat-bb] Re: FW: Re: AO-7 is not OK

[Andrew Glasbrenner]

>
> Once the bird was out of eclipse, the signals were almost normal, but not for the entire pass.  I also worked W7LRD for a few seconds at 5 degrees.
>
> 73 de W4AS
>
>   
AO-7 is in sunlight 24/7 at the moment. If it was in eclipse you would 
not hear anything at all. It is however riding the terminator for a good 
portion of the orbit. I need to run some predictions and see when/if it 
returns to eclipses this summer.

It's likely that the orientation is just poor right now, and not much 
power is being generated by the panels to run the transponder. It would 
be interesting to see if when signals are poor on the Mode B 
transponder, is the 435 beacon on?

73, Drew KO4MA
AMSAT-NA VP Operations