Wow, have things ever slowed down. I did fill in several missing band-slots for CY9C, and a few more random band-slots for other countries. But I haven’t worked an ATNO in ages. So no new countries to report, and only six new band-points. Both DXCC 275 and Challenge 1500 will be a long time coming.
I was fortunate enough to work CY9C today at 21:08:39 during a pass of AO-7. Great operator on the other end and great signals too. Heard him work quite a few prior to me as well.
SatPC32 Screen Photo taken shortly after working CY9C on AO-7 (about 21:10 UTC)
Did the same thing when they weren’t busy on a XW-2C pass at 22:07:25. Even stronger signals.
Clayton, W5PFG, published the following table on the AMSAT-BB (He reported hearing my call to CY9C down in Texas):
CY9C satellite passes for next 24 hours. They make work others as available. Asterisks * indicates a prioritized pass for best geographical coverage. All dates/times are UTC
25.08.2016 AO-85 16:51-17:02
25.08.2016 AO-07 17:15-17:34
25.08.2016 AO-85 18:32-18:42
25.08.2016 AO-07 19:06-19:27
25.08.2016 XW-2C 20:28-20:37 *
25.08.2016 AO-07 21:04-21:19 *
25.08.2016 XW-2C 22:02-22:11
25.08.2016 XW-2F 22:16-22:25
25.08.2016 XW-2A 23:38-23:44 *
26.08.2016 FO-29 01:46-01:52 *
26.08.2016 SO-50 03:10-03:21
26.08.2016 FO-29 03:28-03:45 *
26.08.2016 SO-50 04:50-05:02 *
26.08.2016 FO-29 05:13-05:30
26.08.2016 SO-50 06:33-06:42 *
26.08.2016 FO-29 06:59-07:11 *
My family and I went to Lake George in early August for a week of fun — I’m not as bendy as they are, so while they were parasailing and kayaking, I hung back at our hotel to make a few QRP contacts while portable.
We had a nice room with a second story balcony that overlooked the lake. I was able to hang my dipole from the two far ends of the balcony, about 24 feet across (short for 20-meters). Using that sub-optimal antenna I did work a pair of CW QRP contacts with WW4LL, Fred in GA, and K1DW, Dallas in LA.
Dipole fed with RG174 strung from the columns about 24 feet apart on our deck.
KX3 operating portable CW
One funny thing — on my second day using the KX3, the internal battery was running low, so I replaced it with a spare, and when I picked the rig back up, the main tuning knob fell off. I watched it roll across the bottom of the deck railing, noticing that the knob was taller than the gap. Whew! Unfortunately it rolled to the very end of the deck, where the gap was much larger. I then watched the knob roll off the end of the deck, and heard it bounce off of several other decks then into the grass below. Fortunately my son found the knob in some flowers, and I actually found the felt washer that provides a bit of back drag under our deck rail. Now that was very lucky!
Bruce, KK5DO, processed my application within minutes of it being emailed to him, and I received the award #569 a couple of days later. This particular award requires twenty 2x satellite QSOs in different states, provinces, or countries. It doesn’t seem hard on the face of it, and it really isn’t, but the confirmation requirement is the sticky point; either in QSL form or via LotW. I’ve mentioned before that for some odd reason, comparatively few of the satellite operators use LotW, surprising because they all use computers to predict orbits or control Doppler and antenna pointing.
The next award in the queue is the OSCAR Satellite Communication Sexagesimal Award — I’m almost there, just need a few more contacts and a bunch more confirmations. This is a pretty rare award, only 172 issued to date.
I can remember back to the days of AO-6 and AO-7. One satellite in the sky, 4-6 passes in a day, calculations done graphically using the Oscar Locator and weekly elements sent via W1AW bulletin (no PCs or public internet back then).
Today the sky is jammed full of satellites, with a new one (EO-79) being turned over to amateur use as I write this.
The above is “The sky at a glance” output from the GPredict.exe program; showing satellites visible in my area between about 1 PM and 9 PM today. That’s 23 opportunities for me to work a satellite in an 8 hour window. I have worked all of those with simple equipment (egg-beater antennas with mast mounted preamps) — some, like FO-29, are much easier than others (like AO-85 which doesn’t hear me well, or AO-73, which can be difficult to locate one’s downlink on).
Being a satellite guy no longer means waiting half the day to make a contact or two. You can pretty much be sure there will be a satellite in view no more than every other hour, and often several in an hour.
Must be a newish award as I don’t know why I received an email today saying I had qualified for a new award, but when I checked, it turned out to be for working 500 US Counties.
The QSL rate for satellite operators is disappointingly low, even for those using LotW. This means it takes more time to obtain various operating awards.
Today, I finally qualified for the AMSAT Oscar Satellite Communications Achievement Award, which is 20 different states and countries confirmed. George, WA5KBH in Louisiana happened to be the 20th different confirmation on FO-29 SSB today. Thanks for uploading your satellite activity so quickly to LotW!
Stations in the US that had a part in this award are:
DX stations that had a part in the award are:
Thanks everybody!
I have also been monitoring the telemetry from UKUBE-2 (Funcube-2).
With a satellite frequency of 145.915.7, I received packets with a frequency of 1627 Hz to 1288 Hz. This is a shift of 339 Hz (very close to the shift seen for AO-73). That puts the center frequency at 1457 Hz. This is pretty darn close to the sweet spot for 1500 decoding — an adjusted Doppler.sqf frequency would be 145.915.65.
With the packets captured today, I just broke into the top 200 in terms of data providers (clearly not many folks are providing data to the warehouse for UKUBE-1 if 338 packets uploaded is ranked at 193).
I’ve been watching AO-73 telemetry frequencies for the past few weeks. Today I noted that a satellite frequency of 145.934.8 produced packets captured between 1538 and 1168 Hz, or a drift over that period of 370 Hz. From this it appears a slightly more optimal frequency for my Doppler.sqf file would be 145.934.65, which would have produced packets captured between 1688 and 1418 Hz — pretty much centered around 1500 Hz.
Day and night, all HF bands are “Poor”
