[amsat-bb] AO-85 question

[Burns Fisher]

I forgot about the PL tone frequency.  The filter on that is not all that
sharp, and the detection DSP code was improved for at least AO-91 (can't
remember without checking if AO-92 and Cliff got that fix too).

But yes, if the bird does not receive you strong enough it will not hear
the tone either and will not switch on.  That said, there is a lot of
traffic on it in the northeast US.  The number of telemetry frames I get is
kind of proportional to how busy it is, and 85 is the one I get the most
from.  I see you are in IN.  You might try passes when it is east of you
and thus within range of more stations along the Atlantic coast.

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 12:47 AM Fernando Ramirez <framirezferrer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Steve, AO-85 can be a bit harder to work with an HT but it's doable. I
> started making QSOs with a UV-5R half duplex and an Arrow antenna. IMHO the
> best chances are on descending passes or after the first quarter of an
> ascending pass. Passes above 20° work the best.
>
> My longest distance on AO-85 was 5282 km with FG8OJ in Guadeloupe using a
> UV-B5 to transmit and a FT-817 as the receiver. I was using the Arrow
> during that 2° pass.
>
> Try twisting the antenna to match the satellite RX polarization.
> Figuratively speaking, of course :-)
>
> Best of luck!
>
> Fernando
> NP4JV
>
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 7:19 AM <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
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> _______________________________________________
> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
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> expressed
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