I'm going to be heavily involved with a special event station - and ham radio demos for the public - at a 10 day long regional (multi-county) Fair starting September 11. This is the third year for our multi-club effort as N4F; see the details of what we're doing and have done in the past on pages 65-66 of September 2015 QST, and HamRadioNow.tv, episode 171. (Email me off-list if you want to know more, have questions, about what we're doing at the NC Mountain State Fair after reading the article or seeing the video.)
This year we're going to try to add some satellite activity, and since I'm the only one in this area with any satellite experience (which is a gross overstatement :-) ), I'm looking for ideas from this bulletin board for a list of potential demos.
I posted earlier about dual-band tape measure antennas (we may even try to build some at the Fair) to be used for SO-50, but mainly those will be for transmitter hunts. We just want to show the public how easy - and inexpensive - it can be to build some of your own equipment.
Linear sats are pretty much out, unless I take my TS-2000 to the Fairgrounds, and even then I won't be there all the time. So that is low on the possibility list.
Some things I have batted around are:
1) Dedicated APRS station for ISS
2) Dedicated Weather Fax reception station
3) SO-50 demos
4) ISS voice contacts (I know this is very hit or miss)
5) IF the ISS were doing SSTV picture downloads like twice earlier this year....I know this isn't going to happen :-) Are there any satellites currently sending pictures on a regular basis?
6) Are there any satellites with easily decodable telemetry?
So I'm very open to other ideas, and even open as to what not to even consider.. Email me off the list if you like - N4HF@AMSAT.ORG; I know that replies via the bulletin board can get rather long and unwieldy when the original email broaches so many ideas (like this one)
Thanks
Philip N4HF