A dear friend of mine, John WA1aBI, always told me that the best DX on 160 meters came on chilly winter nights at the bottom of the solar cycle. He certainly was right.
Today, shortly after midnight, I worked Hawaii on 160 meter FT8. It was just like a local contact. My thanks to Tetsuo AH7C for being on the air and for confirming so quickly. This happens to be state 49 in WAS and country 69 in DXCC on 160 meters. So the hunt continues for Alaska and 30 other countries!
Putting on “old man” voice … “Back in my day, you were lucky to work one station and had only a few minutes maybe three or four times a day to do so”
Things are MUCH easier now, with more than a dozen birds in the sky, you can pretty much fill your day chatting with people. I use a program called Gpredict, which is available for multiple platforms. It has a feature called “Sky at a glance” that is wonderful for keeping track of things coming up.
The image below is a snap of this afternoon’s passes. Each different color represents a different satellite. The time scale is local (EST). The length of each colored bar corresponds to the duration of the pass — short passes may be great for DX, or simply might be marginal passes. You can hover your mouse over each colored bar to get more details.
Thirteen different birds are shown with 19 different roughly 10 minute long opportunities to talk to someone. And that’s just from 1:30 PM to 9:30 PM today!
There are so many aspects of Amateur Radio that capture my attention. Satellite operation is one of them. There are more than a dozen satellites “birds” in orbit now and you can pretty much fill an entire day working through them, with a few short pauses between orbits left over to deal with QSLing.
There are three fully operational FM birds (AO-91, AO-92, SO-50), and two more that should be operational soon. While these are called “Easy Sats” because simple gear, like a HT and simple beam antenna, can be used to make contacts, that makes them wildly popular. The fast paced approach to making contacts can be intimidating at times.
Far more relaxed are the “Linear Sats”, which allow the use of SSB or CW. These are know for more casual operation, long winded QSOs, and DX into Europe and the Caribbean. Currently there are nine in full operation and at least two more that will be operational soon. AO-7, the oldest of the lot, was launched in 1974. FO-29, launched in 1996, is in a higher orbit which allows DX into Europe. The equipment is a bit less ordinary, requiring an all-mode transceiver for VHF and UHF, but new gear is available (TS-2000, IC-9100, and IC-9700), and lots of used gear is out there (IC-910H, TK-790).
I’ve been active on the birds dating back to the launch of AO-7 (having caught the bug listening to AO-6), but over the past seven years, most of my activity has centered around getting ready for Winter Field Day, Summer Field Day, or Jamboree on the air. However, in the last three weeks I’ve been on the birds almost every day. I now have 10 DXCC countries confirmed, 34 States, 62 VUCC Grids, and have worked 140 different stations on various satellites.
50 Years of Amateur Radio Satellites in Space
I think I set goals that were a tad low for this year, but DXing and state hunting is so hit or miss (also lots of folks go on holiday in the beginning of the year).
Four of my 2019 goals were:
So I stand at 271 countries confirmed (plus holding a beautiful QSL from Remo H44SHD in the Solomon Islands). I’m at 67 confirmed for 160-Meters (and have 3 more countries, including Hawaii, that I hope will eventually confirm). Still 15 more to go on the Band-Points, but I am awaiting 6 more from South Cook Island and Sierra Leone. Finally I have 31 confirmed states on various satellites (and 9 countries).
In addition to my yearly goals, I often have a few in my back pocket that I am working on. One of those was working at least one station every day for a month (pretty easy), and having at least one station confirm via LotW every day (hard). The combination of both of those is pretty darned hard (trust me, I know, I’ve been trying for years). Something will come up like a trip that breaks the streak of contacts, or folks simply don’t use LotW. Last year, even during the International Grid Chase, I never completed that goal.
My thanks to LotW champ and fellow satellite user, Rich KC3KJQ for our AO-92 QSO this morning, and for confirming so quickly. With his QSO, I have completed another silly goal the first month of 2019!
I was curious to see how many different people I’ve worked on the various satellites since getting back on the air in 2011. In the past 8 years I’ve worked 112 different stations. Some of the birds are no longer working in that time. Most of the contacts have happened in the last 3 years, but there were bursts of activity in earlier years too.
Many thanks to all the different folks that have made satellite operation fun!
It is always exciting to make a contact through AO-7, a satellite that was launched in 1974. It died due to battery failure about five years later (batteries shorted), exceeding its design goals. Amazingly, 21 years after its launch, in 2002, it came back to life, when the battery pack went open circuit, allowing the solar panels to power the satellite when not eclipsed. It is still working from time to time in 2019.
It does have a tendency to hop between Mode A (2 meter uplink and 10 meter downlink), or Mode B (70 cm uplink and 2 meter downlink), and if someone runs too much power on their uplink it will cause it to shift mode as the internal power rail dies.
Thank you to John, AB5SS, for being there this afternoon on CW. Nice to see the old lady still working.
I have two satellite stations: a portable one using an Icom -910H, and my home station using an Icom-9100. The portable one usually works better because I’ll be in open areas with no trees, and using a beam (either fixed on a tripod, or on an AZ/EL rotor). Each station has its own laptop because of different configurations. Therein lies today’s embarrassing problem.
Before WFD, I had contacted stations on every operating satellite so I could get things calibrated. So the portable station was working just fine.
Back at home, things weren’t so rosy. I didn’t have the Doppler.sqf values entered for CAS-4A or CAS-4B (odd since I had AO-91 and AO-92 entered). So I looked them up and edited the file. As I had several passes this morning and early afternoon, I calibrated the uplink, but heard folks rapidly shift out of my passband. On top of that the calibration values seemed to hop around, a problem I’ve never experienced.
I don’t know why I thought to look, but I checked the front panel, and saw “Satellite” “Reverse” exactly as I expected. But things sure weren’t right. So I checked the Satellite.sqf file entries for CAS-4A and CAS-4B and found out, SURPRISE, that I had incorrectly entered “NOR” not “REV”. Things were tracking in the opposite direction. So that front panel indicator of “REV” means nothing.
I apologize to everyone who attempted to work me today. My total screwup.
My thanks to the crew in NH working N1FD (4O NH) during Winter Field Day this year. There was a decent CAS-4B pass that began 13 min after WFD got underway, the first pass of the contest. I was able to work N1FD as the satellite got above 4 degrees elevation (there is a bit of a slope that blocks things to the west). Both N1FD and I commented that it was ashamed that the rules allowed for only a single contact — it’s a fair amount of effort to prepare, setup, and takedown, for a few seconds of on-air time!
With the pass beginning at 19:13 UTC, I planned to arrive at 18:00 to get setup. Honestly, a half-hour would do, so I sauntered around getting things ready. I was using an old Icon 910H feeding a standard Arrow Antenna (10 el on 70 cm, 3 el on 2 m). An ancient CF-30 Toughbook ran SATPC32 for the doppler correction. A 30 AH LiFePO4 battery powered the radio.
About 1 minute into the pass, the satellite was 4 degrees above the horizon, and I started to hear SSB chatter. I adjusted the tuning knob about a half KHz from the middle of the passband and found N1FD calling CQ WFD. at 19:15:02 UTC the contact was in the log. They were booming in S7 to S9 on the Icom meter.
Rig inside the truck. CF-30 Toughbook, IC-910H, 30AH LiFePO4 battery (CAS-4B AOS in in about 10 min)
Arrow crossed beam (3 el 2m, 10 el 70cm) on photo tripod.
A couple of friends were standing next to the truck as I chatted with N1FD. They commented that only a minute or so was required to make the contact — seemed too easy. It was, for sure, but only at the expense of a bunch of planning — figuring out the passes, making sure the offsets had been dialed in for all the birds, and testing the equipment every day for several days before the event.
I’ve received several inquiries about using my ZumSpot mobile (from a USB Battery Pack). Inevitably the conversation turns around to the size of the power supply required. It doesn’t help matters that the US vendors sell a 3-amp USB wall supply to run it, which one might reasonably assume means it needs a several amps of current.
I finally dug my USB power meter out and charged it up and took some measurements. At no time, while booting up, or running on transmit, did I see a peak current reading of more than 250 mA. So I would suggest to folks that a 500 mA supply is more than enough.
In my case the readings came from a combo of a RPiZero and ZumSpot. It was running PiStar version 3.4.16, and was in YSF mode. I would say that the “average” current draw (a mix of TX and RX) was around 170 mA. Again the peak was under 250 mA
I did note that when the RPi was shut down, there was still a 70 mA draw, which is likely the idle current consumption of the ZumSpot, but I did not measure it separately to be sure.
By the way, while the consumption of a RPiZero may vary from unit to unit, there have been several posts that indicate it pulls about 130 mA with WiFi on. That would be pretty consistent with what I saw . Those using it on RPi2/3 will have higher current demand due to the extra features on those boards. But even then I can’t see a case were the current demand would be above 500 mA.
