Yes, definitely need to shoot a little high on the L-band uplink. I was running it about 10khz high, but it seemed to have some tolerance for being off by a few. Made contact on the 04:47z pass with Patrick WD9EWK, and also heard AD5MT, but couldn't complete the contact. Manual tuning of the FT-736R uplink, watching Gpredict's display, with computer control of the FT847 downlink and antenna rotisserie. That's the first contact on L-band since, um, AO-51? Nice to know it still all works! Now I need to figure out how to get Gpredict to run both radios...
Stations heard have a "distant" sound to them - kind of hard to describe, and not something I've heard on other satellites. I think the lower part of the audio frequency response may not be as strong as the upper part. Also, the audio was kind of quiet overall (comparing to the unsquelched hash). {shrug} Certainly not a big problem, however you do have to listen carefully. Headphones required.
Greg KO6TH
Mike Seguin wrote:
I just had a very noisy 6 degree max pass here in VT. There was nobody in the footprint on L Band so I tested nominal frequency for the uplink.
This time the nominal was ~ 8.5 kHz high. 1267.3585
More testing is needed, especially with lower power to fine tune.
Mike