At 11:37 AM 8/7/2007, Gould Smith wrote:
Hello Bruce and Scott,
My experience and testing has shown me that small yagis, at a fixed elevation AND a preamp at the antenna will more than adequately work all the current LEOs. ...
Dear Friends,
Just a few comments on omni's.
The key to working the LEOs is really just a decent mast mounted preamp. A Yagi is nice but I have worked 49 states and around 40 countries using just omni antennas on the LEOs. It really isn't that hard, you just have to be able to HEAR the satellite and that means a mast mounted preamp. I have worked AO-51 even on Field Day with just an EZ Lindenblad on 2m and parasitic Lindenblad on 70cm.
The coax is not that important as long as you get at least 5 watts or so at the antenna for the uplink. On AO-51, of course, the more power the better because of the QRM but the satellite would be full quieting at 5 watts into an omni.
73, Tony AA2TX