[amsat-bb] I just randomly met a French QO-100 operator

[John Brier]

Pics and article on my blog but I'm posting the text inline below for
your convenience.

https://spacecomms.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/i-just-met-a-french-qo-100-operator/

Unbelievable. I just had lunch with a French QO-100 satellite
operator. His name is Alexendre.
He is in my area for work for the weekend. I was driving to Waffle
House for some food when I heard him identify as W4/F5USF on the
146.64 RARS repeater. Intrigued by a French station over here, I
responded to his call and he said he was out looking for lunch too. He
also said he was in South West Raleigh which is where I live and where
I was! I asked him how long he was going to be here as I was busy this
afternoon and he said he was leaving tomorrow so I figured I should
meet up with him since he wasn’t going to be in the US that long.

We met at a Jason’s Deli and when he asked me what my ham radio
interests were I told him satellite. He said he used to work sats like
AO-7 but recently had been working QO-100. He apologized that we
didn’t have a GEO sat over here. Haha.

At lunch he told me all about his QRP QO-100 setup. It’s only strong
enough to work CW, but he is working on getting more power so he can
do SSB. He has a degree in microwave engineering so when I told him I
honestly didn’t understand a lot of the concepts related to running a
QO-100 station he started teaching me about mixing signals to get 2.4
GHz, LOs, RFs, how to get stable reference signals without GPS, etc.
Very interesting.

I showed him some of the satellite gear I had in my car and he snapped
a picture of me with it to show his friends.

Before we left I gave him some Space Comms, SatNOGS and Libre Space
stickers. He is also a SOTA op and that is what he has the FT-817 for.
He plans to activate a SOTA summit before he leaves the US.

73, John Brier KG4AKV

P.S. Within the next hour or two I’m going to do a livestream on
YouTube updating on the progress of my satellite ground station build.