I kept my FUNcube Dongle Pro Plus (FCD) running all night long hoping to capture several morning passes. Over a total of four passes it picked up 7 more frames — somewhat dissapointing.
It turns out that the automatic signal scanner was shifting up to about 145.993 KHz and capturing a spur, then sticking on that frequency. Not good. There is a parameter within the satellite .dat file that allows one to set the maximum frequency bound. It’s default value was 145990. I changed that to 145985 (I’ve never see the carrier at that high a frequency — in fact, even with Doppler, it seems to be no higher than 145981 at the beginning of a pass).
I hoped that change would help, but it doesn’t appear to prevent the AFC from locking onto that spur. So unattended decoding might be difficult. Only 1 more frame was captured during the next 30ish degree elevation pass.
During the next 30ish max Elevation pass tonight, I picked up another 11 frames by clicking on the spot that appeared to be the carrier frequency to me.
Decent Eye Diagram and decoded data appear around 2341 UTC — this was the first frame decoded out of a total of 11 Note the spur about 14 KHz above the AO-85 Carrier
What the Oct 15 2335-2349 UTC pass looked like at FN41fn
