[amsat-bb] Probably FO-29 world distance record; QSO between US and UK

[Hector W5CBF/CO6CBF]

Hello to all

I am pleased to report that Peter G4DOL and I had another extreme QSO on
FO-29.  It is my furthest contact on the birds!

Back on October 2013, Peter and I had a very nice contact between EL92sd,
Cienfuegos, Cuba and IO80so, Weymouth area, UK. It was a 7286 km contact and
probably the first contact between UK and Cuba on FO-29!

Peter and I desired to try again on FO-29, this time between EM21hs, Texas,
US and his habitual spot in  IO80so. We were able to complete a very nice CW
contact on the 92319 orbit of FO-29. Peter had just 0.1 degree as maxim
elevation while I had 0.8 during the 80 seconds mutual window.  As before,
Peter did all the hard work by driving until his habitual spot at a
cliff-top and  setting up his "portable satellite station"  (19 elements
Yagi for 435MHz and 10 elements Yagi for 2m both with  horizontal
polarization). FO-29 was sounding really good on these orbits. It was a
solid 559 satellite contact, we were very impressed.

We made the calculations using our 10 digit grid squares at
http://no.nonsense.ee/qth/map.html The distance between the stations was
7537.799 km (4683.77 mi). To my knowledge,  the longest distance archived on
FO-29 until now had been 7,533.685 km between Frank, K4FEG and Erich, DK1TB.
http://www.qrz.com/db/k4feg It appears that an even longer distance is
achievable. It has been reported that FO-29 has a "theoretical maximum
range" of 7502 km, but I guess that at least 7600km is doable. We will try
to break our own record!

This contact was possible thanks to the great feature implemented on SatPC32
V12.8b. There is an option of seeing the frequency you are at the satellite
receiver at any time during a pass. It allows the operators to tune the
right frequencies and attempt a contact without having to search for each
other. 

We have some pictures, recording and GPS screen shoots. I will try to post
everything online. I will be happy to email everything, also.

Thanks very much to Peter for his persistence, effort and all the fun!

73!

Hector, W5CBF/CO6CBF