[amsat-bb] Re: AO-27/SO-50

[Dominic Hawken]

On 24/10/2011 14:31, David Palmer KB5WIA wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
>> . I am using a yeasu g-5500 rotator with the AMSAT controller and ham radio deluxe. Kenwood ts-2000 for the rig and a 8 element 440 and a 4 element 2 meter antenna. The antennas are currently linear polarized since my phasing cables still have not arrived from the manufacturer.
>
> Good setup!
>
>>
>> My questions are, is AO-27 difficult to work? Is it on a schedule? Any ideas why I could not raise or hear it?
>
> Yes, it's on a schedule -- check the status page on www.amsat.org to
> see when it comes on and off. It comes on at mid-latitudes by a timer,
> so for an overhead pass in your area you *should* have heard it ....
> other things to check would be that the keps are current, and that
> there weren't any glitches during that particular pass (ie. maybe
> radios briefly stopped tuning).  Try again, it's a nice loud sat.
>
>>
>> As for SO-50: Should I be listening 5khz down? Ham radio deluxe is controlling the radio frequencies and I made a custom entry for 5khz down and corrected for Doppler. This still did not seem to help.
>
> I've found SO-50 about 5kHz-8kHz down, so listen down a little.
> Remember the tone on the uplink too.  Also, I've seen quite a few
> posts that the TS-2000 has a birdie right at the high end of SO-50's
> downlink, so you may have a better chance hearing it later in the pass
> as doppler moves the downlink away from the birdie.

I have a virtually identical set up but with a FT-847 radio. I get AO-27 
but with HRD I do find I have to tune about to get the receive - 5 to 
10Khz. Wierdly I find it _much_ easier to work the SSB sats with the set 
up than I do the FM ones - sounds like you have the same issue.

Dominic G6NQO