The transponder was indeed on for the 2140Z pass over North America. I heard a station in DN45 (I guess it was WC7V) right as the satellite came up above about 10 degrees (lots of buildings and trees in the way), worked AC0RA, but there was some difficulty getting into the satellite with just 5 watts and an Elk antenna, and then I heard and half-worked WB3CSY (probably not a valid QSO) before I lost the bird at about 12 degrees. I also heard the ID and greeting about halfway through the pass.
The signal is a few dB down from SO-50 and the uplink receiver is definitely less tolerant of being off frequency. My best signal into the bird was in narrow FM while tuning for Doppler on the uplink. At TCA, an elevation of about 55 degrees, the downlink signal was S9 on my FT-817s meter. SO-50 is usually S+ above 35 degrees here.
My station here is two FT-817s, an Elk Antenna, and a High Sierra Microwave LNAA432 preamp. I was having some desense issues and further inspection revealed a nick in my feedline as the probable cause.
I look forward to trying it out again in the remaining weeks before it decays.
73,
Paul Stoetzer, N8HM Washington, DC (FM18lv)
On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Ken Swaggart [email protected] wrote:
Received an email from the LituanicaSat-1 control ops that transponder remains on today and we're welcome to use it.
During a late morning west coast pass I was able to access the transponder using the 67 Hz PL and the downlink sounded very good using Yagis, with some slow QSB probably due to tumbling. It seems to have a very good receiver and only a few Watts were required to achieve full quieting.
73, Ken, W7KKE CN75xa
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