[amsat-bb] AO-85 question

[Ryan Noguchi]

 AO-85 is a little deaf, so it's harder to get into than the other FM birds. As a result, it gets less traffic. It is workable with an HT and handheld beam, just not as easily. 

The VHF and UHF antennas on the Fox-1 series aren't orthogonal, so with the Arrow you often will get better results by twisting the antenna 90 degrees between transmitting and receiving. The other FM birds aren't nearly as sensitive to polarization mismatch. 

I find that AO-85's AFC is less forgiving than AO-91 or AO-92, which makes good Doppler correction timing--relative to the nominal uplink frequency of 435.172, not .170--more important for best results. I also find a PL tone of 69.3 to be more reliable than 67.0, particularly on the second half of the pass; I got that tip from Patrick WD9EWK. 


73, Ryan AI6DO


    On Monday, October 29, 2018, 7:19:36 AM PDT, skristof at etczone.com <skristof at etczone.com> wrote:  
 
 Lately, I've been trying other FM satellites besides SO-50. I have made
contacts on AO-92, but I can't get anything from AO-85. 

On AO-85 I can hear the voice ID of the satellite plain as day, but I
never hear any other hams trying to make contacts and I can't seem to
get into the satellite.  

My set up is two Baofeng handhelds and an Arrow antenna. This set up
works fine on SO-50 and AO-92 so I know that it works. 

For AO-85 I'm using 435.170 for the uplink and 145.980 for the downlink.
I have the uplink sending the 67.0 Hz tone. 

So, what am I missing? Constructive tips would be very much appreciated.


Steve AI9IN