[amsat-bb] Antennas used for AO-92 L/V, & a comment about AO-92 this morning...

[Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK)]

Hi!

It has been almost 4 months since AO-92 was opened up for general use, and
the first L/V activation. I have tried to work the L/V configuration anytime
it is active, whether I am home or away from home. I have worked
approximately
20 different stations over this time. Most of the time, I have used a
5-element
Comet CY-1205 Yagi with my Alinco DJ-G7T HT for my 1.2 GHz uplink.
Sometimes,
I go with a Chinese-made 10-element Yagi I ordered from an eBay seller.

>From working different stations across the country, it seems like other
stations
I work are using larger antennas than mine - maybe the same 10-element Yagi
I
use, the 16-element Comet CYA-1216E Yagi, Yagis with more than 16 elements,
or
some have used a helix. My question is this: other than the HT duckies used
by
a couple of stations early on, does anyone besides me use an antenna
smaller
than a 10-element Yagi to work AO-92 L/V? If so, what are you using? I am
not
so concerned about transmitter power, as there are a few of us using HTs
with
1W output on the 1.2 GHz band, and we are able to work AO-92 at that power
level.

A comment about the AO-92 pass around 1625 UTC this morning...

This was not a high pass out here in Arizona, with maximum elevation around
13
degrees to the east. I have worked stations to the east around this
elevation
in the past, so I went out to try for more contacts. Near the midpoint of
the
pass here, I heard a station make 2 long CQ calls on the pass. There should
be
no need to make CQ calls, let alone long CQ calls, on any FM satellite. The
145.880 MHz AO-92 downlink is easy to hear. There are ample opportunities
to
get this set up, by working other AO-92 passes in the normal U/V
configuration.
If the issue is getting the uplink frequency and/or antenna aligned with
the
satellite, full-duplex operation should ensure that there is no need for a
long transmission to be heard through the satellite.

If you want to hear the audio I recorded from this pass, it is in my Dropbox
space at http://dropbox.wd9ewk.net/ . Look in the Satellite_Audio-2018
folder,
and find the MP3 file with the name starting with "20180527-1626UTC47" for
the
recording.

73!





Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK
http://www.wd9ewk.net/
Twitter: @WD9EWK or http://twitter.com/WD9EWK