This afternoon I was reading through the latest amsat journal when I got to the article on Amsat Fd 2014. I got to the chart with the scores and was surprised to see K0kbx in spot number one as that's the club I operated with on FD. I was the sole operator this year at the satellite station and just want to share quickly what I had setup for a station.
I really wasn't planning on operating sats for fd this year but about a week before fd a local club decided they were going to partake in fd for the first time in a few years. Well I decided I would come out and join but really didn't have time to put a decent station together so I used the a basic setup I recently mounted on the truck for the June vhf contest.
I had a pair of 7 element yagis on 2m and two 8ft long yagis on 435 mhz one mounted horizontally and the other mounted vertically. All these antenna were aimed at the horizon and could only be moved left and right. No elevation this time. I used my ic910 for the radio but no computer control. And because my laptop was being used as a logbook I used my phone with amsatdroid to track the sats. I went with a fairly simple setup and really just hoped to make a few contacts to help others out.
Turns out the campground we setup in was on a hill and very low noise so even though I had no elevation I could hear the sats almost the entire pass. But above 15 degrees or so my ability to get in to the bird decrease greatly so most of my contacts were made with less then 15 degrees.
I was really surprised that which such a simple setup it seemed to work ok.
I also made two ao7 mode a contact for which I used a 10m dipole up at 35ft for rx. That seemed to work great. To bad there were more stations ready to work mode a.
I think the key to working fd on the satellites is knowing how to use your equipment and the characteristics of the satellites your going to operate. I heard plenty of stations that spend the whole time trying to find there downlink or just calling cq and never answering because they couldn't hear.
Look forward to Amsat Field Day 2015!
73 Wyatt AC0RA
Ps the photo in the journal that's says it's k0kbx station its not.