SCORE!!!

Don, VE3VRW, from Dog Park Software, was a real champ and helped explain the reason why I was having issues with my IC-9100 and MacDoppler.  It turns out when Icom wrote their custom drivers for Windows, they made sure they enumerated the two USB ports with the CI-V control port as the lower of the two.  Unfortunately, Icom has decided to ignore the Apple market and does NOT support the IC-9100 on that platform.  However, generic drivers are available from SiLabs.

What was happening was each time the radio powered up, it would randomly enumerate either the first or second USB port for CI-V control.  So MacDoppler, set to use the lower port, would work sometimes, and not other times.  The quick 5 second work-around is simply to select the “other port” on the config window to get things working.  Maybe the best fix of all is to use an external USB to CI-V converter.  Because it enumerates a single USB port, it will always appear as the same port to the Apple Mac.

Anyway, with MacDoppler working and my IC-9100 running Mode JA (V/U), I made a rather long contact on SSB with Tom, K8TL over FO29 during the 19:20 UTC pass.  Unlike other satellite QSOs I recall from the past, this one went on for about 10 minutes — a real rag-chew.

What makes this special is that the final QSO recorded in my logbook when I went off the air on Jan 16, 2001, was a contact with WD8DPA over FO29.  (Back then I was active on AO10, FO20, FO29 and RS12).  I made three FO29 contacts during the 03:50 UTC pass, turned off my equipment, packed it up in boxes, and went QRT for more than a decade.

But like the Phoenix, ham radio has risen again to a place of prominence in my life.  FO29 was there to see me off 10 years ago, and it was there to welcome me back to the satellite modes today.  That’s pretty cool.