Category Archives: Satellite

Holding Breath for STMsat-1 Reboot at Midnight

Posted on May 23, 2016 by robert

STMsat-1, a CubeSat built by elementary school students at the Saint Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington VA, has been silent since its launch from the ISS on May 16. It has been tracked/identified and assigned the International Designator 1998-067HW, or … Continue reading →

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Worked AMSAT Demo Station at Dayton Hamvention

Posted on May 21, 2016 by robert

I had a Fox-1 QSO today at 20:10 UTC with John Papay, K8YSE operating portable at the AMSAT Demonstration Station at the Dayton Hamvention. Less than an hour later, at 21:01 I also worked him on SSB using AO-7.

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Another Old Friend – AO-7

Posted on May 20, 2016 by robert

Although I’ve worked AO-7 during several Field Days (using our club call W1LY), I hadn’t made an AO-7 QSO since last summer.  Today I worked W4VAS, notably on SSB (my first voice QSO on that bird). It is simply amazing … Continue reading →

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AO-73, It’s Been Ages

Posted on May 19, 2016 by robert

My last AO-73 QSO was about 10 months ago.  Part of the reason is laziness — it is time consuming to relocate the uplink offset each time I try to work the bird.  I’ve read that the uplink passband is unstable … Continue reading →

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Log Shows QSOs With Ten Different Satellites

Posted on May 19, 2016 by robert

I went through my logbook since I got back on the air five years ago and discovered a bunch of confirmed satellite QSOs.  In that time I’ve worked the following: AO-7 Confirmed by eQSL AO-27 (Four QSOs but no confirmations … Continue reading →

Posted in AO-7, AO-73, AO-85, ARISS, FO-29, ISS, Satellite, SO-50, XW-2A, XW-2C, XW-2F | Leave a comment

A Bit More Satellite DX

Posted on May 19, 2016 by robert

During a FO-29 pass over the Atlantic I worked two European stations:  Francisco EA1JM in Spain, and Graham, G3VKV in England.

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Another Great Satellite Day

Posted on May 18, 2016 by robert

I’m feeling guilty for neglecting DX, but I’ve been having a bunch of fun with satellites recently. Several QSOs on FO-29 with calibration of both SSB and CW uplink performed.  Not much CW action on these days, but I’ll be … Continue reading →

Posted in AO-7, AO-73, AO-85, FO-29, Satellite, SO-50, XW-2A, XW-2C, XW-2F | Leave a comment

Worked Ireland via FO-29

Posted on May 17, 2016 by robert

Well this is RARE DX for me.  I’ve only worked stations in the USA and Canada before, but FO-29 has a much larger footprint than more recent LEO satellites.  I worked George, MI6GTY, on CW from his location in Northern … Continue reading →

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Setup Funcube Dashboard Again

Posted on May 17, 2016 by robert

I was getting ready for a decent AO-73 pass, when it dawned on me that it was daylight, and therefore the bird was in the Telemetry mode.  Rather than call it quits, I quickly installed a copy of Funcube Dashboard … Continue reading →

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An Old Friend and Some New Ones

Posted on May 15, 2016 by robert

I used GPredict to plan my day and produced the following “Sky at a glance” chart: So about 5:15 PM Local Time (21:15 UTC), a decent pass of AO-7 was overhead.  I heard several CW signals (K4RGK was one of them), … Continue reading →

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