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 that a satellite launched in November of 1974 is still working 15,162 days later (41.5 years). A fortunate happenstance allowed the dead batteries, which had shorted out back in 1981, to go open circuit in 2002, allowing the ancient satellite to spring back to life whenever it is in sunlight.
