I'm happy to voluntarily comply with operating CW in the lower portion of the pass band. I much prefer CW over voice whether working HF or Sats. My frustration is that there is little CW operation on Sats! At one point, I had more cross mode contacts on Sats (me on CW talking with someone using SSB) than CW to CW contacts. I wish more folks would operate CW on Sats. In my opinion, it is much easier to make and keep a CW contact while compensating for doppler.
73,
Marshall AA0FO EM29ne
On Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 8:40 AM Wes Baden [email protected] wrote:
I second the recent posting regarding CW activity in satellite bandpasses. Absent compelling reasons otherwise (for example, that rare DX entity operating CW high up), band management works much better when CW stations operate in the lower half of bandpasses. Along the same lines, I'll say that, when operating CW, especially working weak stations, it can be very frustrating to be QRM'd by one or more S9 SSB stations in the bottom half of bandpasses. This is particularly true when they're calling CQ after CQ, either not hearing or ignoring CW signals nearby.
At the risk of appearing grumpy (my apologies), there lately seems to be a number of CW stations looking for their downlink signal by keeping RX on one frequency, then tuning TX and simultaneously sending dits at high speed. When they are S9 they create quite a bit of QRM as well, to both SSB and CW ops. I understand, of course, the need to match RX and TX freqs--I tune manually myself, without software that helps automatically. But isn't the better procedure to briefly key down on one freq, away from the center of the bandpass, and then tune your RX and find your downlink as quickly as possible? This minimizes QRMing others. I've also found that doing this regularly makes it possible to guess pretty accurately where TX and RX freqs need to be. For instance, on RS-44, when it comes over the north to my QTH, I'm within 1-2 KHz of matching up TX and RX by setting tuning at 145.960 MHz and 435.648 MHz respectively.
All this said, I confess that I was a Mad Ditter myself when I first got on satellites two years ago. I received a couple of emails--always friendly, always helpful--from old timers about the above. This general email is sent out in the same spirit. Satellite operation is different from HF, and there definitely is a learning curve involved.
73 from FN54, Wes NA1ME
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