(What a great name for a satellite!!)
I’ve had four passes of AO-73 over my QTH that have been in the transponder mode, but for the last three of them, while I was able to hear many signals on the downlink, I was unable to hear my own signal. I had run some tests with FO-29 today to ensure that all was well with my rig and antennas. I did an UL Correction (which takes into account any frequency differences on my end and the satellite end of – 700 Hz). However that really was because I was in CW mode (FO-29 has an adjusted DL/UL of 435.850.45 and 145.951.45)
Now AO-73 is a different bird. Its published DL/UL is 145.960/435.140. Despite Doppler correction on both the UL and DL, I was unable to hear my own signal in the Downlink. On the third pass earlier today, I thought I heard my signal with a UL Correction of about 10KHz, but that seemed way to high (I am used to values more like +/- 250Hz to +/- 2500Hz). On pass four I was able to verify that a large UL Correction of +8500 to +11500 Hz is required. I hadn’t tried anything that large before, and therefore never heard myself.
With a correction that started at +8500 and finished at about +9500, I was able to make a QSO with NM3B, Wayne, in Saint Marys PA (FN01).
