Hi John,
The UK and the mid-west were mutually visible in the morning almost the entire month of November, 1997, via AO-10. There was a gap for a couple of weeks in December, 1997, but mutual visibility returned for the 2nd half of January 1998 into Feburary 1998.
RS12/13 made morning passes visible to the mid-west roughly every other week starting October, 1997 to March of 1998. (didn't calculate passes beyond that)
However, if you were tuning around in the FM mode and found an SSB signal loud enough to get your attention, I think you probably heard RS12/13.
Do you remember how long you heard the signal? (a couple of minutes or a half an hour or more). Was the signal strength steady or was there a slow deep QSB?
73, Armando, N8IGJ
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Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 13:58:52 -0600 From: John Geiger aa5jg@fidmail.com To: AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [amsat-bb] HEO history question Message-ID: CAFq43LZDtAvUcUDYzFtYxe4kG0XBQK_iaGNKkR6KE0tB=H1mYw@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Back in late 1997 or early 1998 I was using a Kenwood TR9130 on 2m SSB. One morning I was tuning from the FM to the SSB portion of the band, and heard a station just below 146mhz. I tuned them in, and it was a station from Wales! Obviously going thru a satellite as the 2 meter conditions weren't that good that morning. I am now wondering what satellite it probably was. Hearing it was enough to motivate me to eventually get into satellite operations-that took a few years though.
Anyways, what satellite was I probably hearing? I am guessing AO10 or AO13 but were they operational at that time?
73s John AA5JG