[amsat-bb] Field Day

[Greg D]

Bruce wrote:
> Well, this certainly was more fun than last year.

So, "fun" has various definitions...  Making contacts via satellite,
unfortunately, was not among them for our club, W6EK, this year.

This was our first "serious" attempt to get a satellite contact during
Field Day.  I, the "satellite guy", arrived at our Field Day site armed
with my trusty FT-736R and its 1.2 ghz module, 17-turn helix antenna,
Elk (plus an Arrow from another club member), and sufficient
pass-prediction IT infrastructure to start my own data center, fully
expecting to Ka-Ching! 100 points into the coffer within 10 minutes of
Field Day starting.  Got all set up, double-checked where North was
(hind-sight, we were still wrong, but it didn't matter).  Then I looked
at the S-meter.  The meter was indicating 20-over-9 noise over the
entire 2 meter band.  And, I'm going to hear a sub-one-watt signal from
a thousand miles away in space?  Yeah, right.

Taking a sweep of the area, it appeared the noise peak was from a set of
power lines that ran along one side of the Field Day site.  I
repositioned as far away as I could, but was still looking at several
S-units of noise, depending on where the antennas pointed.  Since many
(most) of the satellites have their downlinks on 2 meters, this would
set the theme for the event.  How to defeat the noise? 

I'll spare you the lengthy saga.  Bottom line, we were able to hear a
few of the passes of a few of the satellites, for a few brief moments of
clarity, but never could get through.  Not enough power on the FM birds,
nor apparently even on the linear ones either.  While I did hear myself
(barely) on FO-29, a complete contact was not to be made.  We did get a
good pass at AO-92's Model L/v in the late evening, aiming away from the
power lines, but it was so loaded with doubles that we couldn't get
through.  Good to know that Mode L still has a strong installed base
among hams, I suppose, but that didn't help our immediate problem.

Our overall points strategy also included doing some Winlink packet
messaging, but being 2-meter-based, that was thwarted too.  In the end,
I did manage to get a couple of messages out via APRS (shorter packets,
better infrastructure, UI-based protocol, equals better chances),
entered via the keypad of my Kenwood TH-D74.  I think we can at least
claim those.

Strategy for next year?  Perhaps an alternate site (the HF teams were
somewhat affected too), or better antennas (narrower beamwidth, more
side rejection), more power, and perhaps a chain saw for the
enticingly-wooden utility poles.  Just kidding on that last one...

So, Drew and the AO-92 control ops, thank you for the opportunity to
give L/v a shot.  It certainly appears that it was a popular mode, and
well worth the off-cycle mode switch.  Maybe next year...

Greg  KO6TH