[amsat-bb] Field Day

[John Brier]

Does anyone have any audio of the passes when AO-92 was in L-band they
can share? I'm curious what calls I recognize and what I don't. I
still need to get an antenna for that band. I have the IC-910H with
the L-band module.

73, John Brier KG4AKV

On Sun, Jun 24, 2018 at 9:49 PM, Greg D <ko6th.greg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
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