Hi again, Alan!
Indeed. Unfortunately, there have only been a small number of stations on. Of those, half were either not hearing the downlink, the correct downlink, or were a Mexican cab company, complete with phone patch. Perhaps it might be time to start using the PL on days with mode V uplink, since that would not be the limiting factor for equipment. I had been wondering why it seemed I was blocked at time on with southern passes in the past, even though I had a good RX signal.
Usually the problems with the 2m pirates south of the US has been on the 145.850 MHz uplink for SO-50 and especially AO-27 when it was operational. SO-50 would usually have nothing coming through with its PL, but AO-27 would happily pass the conversations through to us hams. Oh well... I do think that it shouldn't be a problem to require the PL on the 2m uplink when using 145.920 MHz on AO-51, since that is already required for the standard V/U repeater.
I've only heard 3 stations on each of the 2 passes I worked Friday (UTC), and I had figured there wouldn't be the crowd like there could be for the V/U repeater, but at least I've been able to get on and see what I can do.
On the earlier pass, there were finally only two of us wondering where everybody else was. It is a great mode, with deep but quick and infrequent QSB.
I saw some of the QSB, and could deal with some of it by a twist of my downconverter/antenna. The lower pass made it easier to deal with the Doppler, with constant tuning instead of the quick tuning at the peak of higher passes like I saw yesterday.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/