Actually, the later (North-heading) pass of AO-51 was remarkably sane. I made my 100 point contact with AA5PK, and then sat back to listen. Towards the end of the pass it was pretty quiet, so I answered W6YX who was actually having to call CQ for some attention.
But AO-7 literally sounds like 20 meters. I've never heard it so busy. The Old Girl is holding up extremely well, and I had much better luck there than with FO-29, which seemed to be suffering from the onslaught. AO-27 was super busy too, so I decided to wait for the mid-Pacific 3-degree pass. Almost snagged the NH7 station... Sorry, just couldn't pull out the call sign as the bird set. Time to buy a better preamp and get it mounted directly on the antenna boom (instead of 10' and a cable splice away).
Greg KO6TH
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 10:35:36 -0400 From: [email protected] Subject: RE: [amsat-bb] Field Day Dual-Hop! To: [email protected]; [email protected]
The birds were overcrowded... I had an arrow type antenna set up (split the UHF and VHF beams on to 2 separate booms on my G5400 being controlled by LVB tracker and SATPC32 program for demo purposes) with my Icom 910 and it was difficult to even get the 100 point contact. Made a few contacts and Maybe next year we all can set up the one contact per bird rule and KEEP it! Was fun and the questions I had with my set up perked interest from the people that were "onlookers" Sorry to WB2OQQ and others that I know but the interference was a bit much to overcome. Hope all had a great Field Day. 73, Dee, NB2F At "K2BAR"
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Greg D. Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 9:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [amsat-bb] Field Day Dual-Hop!
Well, one-way, and I didn't have the presence of mind to try to make a cross satellite contact.
The end of the last AO-07 pass (which sounded very much like 20 meters!) crossed with the beginning of FO-29's, so the two satellites passed within a couple of hundred miles of each other. Since the downlink for AO-07 is in the middle of the uplink passband for FO-29, I switched over to FO-29 to take a listen. Sure enough, the bottom of FO-29's passband sounded like 20 meters for a few moments. Then it went away.
Fleeting chaos. Sweet.
Greg KO6TH
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