At 11:41 PM 3/31/2011, K5OE wrote:
Please allow a little perspective on AO-51 from someone who has worked it for a long time and from all over the world.
I left the USA in late 2003 for a work assignment in Darwin, NT (Australia as VK8OE), where I talked to myself for over a year on AO-51 mode L/S (I took my AO-40 setup and it died before I could work it as DX). I did the same thing on ISS packet, having great keyboard QSO's with myself. The only sat contacts I ever made while VK8OE was on AO-51 in mode V/U FM (mobile while at work) with a few ops on the other side of the continent (VK5ZAI, VK3FGN, VK2TU, VK2TRF, et al).
I remember in the UO-14 days many late night passes, where I ended up talking to myself for an entire pass. If I got lucky, one or two others would show up and we'd have a ragchew for the entire pass (with long breaks for those breaking in). The biggest problems I've heard on the FM birds down this way are (1) long range cordless phones, there seems to be millions of these things in SE Asia - I'm assuming it's phones by the tempo of the speech, and (2) new operators who don't realise they're not hearing the 70cm downlinks on their vertical antennas, and accidentally stomp on the uplink. Unfortunately, due to the large distances here, there's often no one else within their simplex range to give them pointers. I have personally elmered a couple who I did find within simplex range, and got them on the birds successfully.
I'm not so active on the satellites these days, but that's due to subtle lifestyle factors that brings the short passes at differing times of day into conflict with other things that happen here, rather than anything fundamental about the sats themselves.
One of the things I notice here is that not only is the population density much lower, but there's none of the grid chasing down here. We do have satellite awards, but these can be completed with a modest amount of contacts (VK0 can be a challenge to work - it's the only VK call area I haven't worked). I've never understood the rationale behind increasing the pressure on an already limited resource by encouraging grid square chasing. One would have thought the FM birds should be the "WARC bands" of the satellite world. Keep the grid chasing to SSB/CW, where more operators can be supported (and maybe encourage a few to upgrade to SSB :) ).
I spent most of last year in Papua New Guinea (V29OE) and the only satellite traffic I ever heard was on AO-51 V/U FM (VK's of course). I never completed a QSO as I just could not make it with a bad battery in my FT51R (less than a Watt) and a whip antenna.
And the only P29s I've worked on the birds have been Americans who were working in PNG! :) Unfortunately, you weren't one of those I've worked.
The thing that really annoys me, though, is that I saw Drew's posting, I wrote down the new uplink frequency, I had it in front of me on a sticky note, and I still didn't connect the dots when I couldn't hear myself in the downlink! I deserved to miss that grid :-)
In the famous words of Homer Simpson... "DOH!" :D
73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com