[amsat-bb] FM Birds, New Grids, and Chaos

[k6vug at sbcglobal.net]

Well said NJ4Y.  Not taking sides or anything like that, but "good operating practice" is always the best ! 

And speaking of incredible, making that rare DX QSO via a sat that is 1000+ kms around AOS, LOS and low angle passes with a 5 watt HT continues to astound everyone around here... and in fact it is the only reason for switching from HF to LEOs. 


73!Umesh





    On Thursday, February 21, 2019, 7:15:44 PM PST, Matthew Stevens <matthew at mrstevens.net> wrote:  
 
 When I first started out on sats a couple years ago, I had a single half
duplex HT and a borrowed arrow. I listened to two or three passes of so50
and ao85 (the only fm sats available at the time), before ever even trying
to work anyone. The passes were pretty hectic, with NPOTA stations and
rovers, and callsigns getting thrown around. My first contact was a few
days later with Fernando, NP4JV who knew I was going to be on and answered
my call when I finally got brave enough to throw it out there. I've had my
share of irritating passes, missed contacts, getting up at three in the
morning to work a 2 deg pass and getting stomped out by somebody calling cq
who couldn't hear the sat well enough to even tell people were calling
him... And - getting up at 2 in the morning for a different pass and not
making a contact with station in Spain because I thought I knew what I was
doing, but really didn't... that's good motivation to practice and learn :-)

It was all fun, part of the challenge of learning a new skill. The coolness
of talking to people through a thing that's flying around 400km over my
head with an HT or an 817 is still incredible.

So I personally don't understand the idea of people getting scared away
from sats because of crazy passes. Sure, it can get hectic. Sure, we all
complain when somebody transmits a carrier over the entire pass and nobody
makes any contacts. But, that's all just going to be part of the ham radio
experience! The same thing happens on HF, during CQWW it gets crazy but
I've never heard anyone say that "scares new ops away." Sometimes its a
zoo, other times it's not. Seems to me that people who are really
interested and want to learn, grow, and enjoy operating stick with it. The
ones who get spooked and never come back, more than likely would have
eventually lost interest for some other reason (in my observation.) If I am
personally helpful to new ops; and exhibit good operating practice myself,
then there is no reason for me to get upset by what some other lid does on
(or off) the air. Let's try to encourage good operating practice, rather
than just complaining about all the perceived problems on the sats.

- Matthew nj4y