The trouble with V/S is that any clueless group trying to make a sat contact will be blindly transmitting on the 2m uplinks. Since nothing is being heard on the UHF downlink, they think the bird is open, so call CQ even more. Their thinking mode V/U, it totally blows away the S band D/L. This happened 3 or 4 years ago. The whole pass was people calling CQ FD without listening to the mode s D/L. A disaster. I don't think I heard even 1 contact being made on several east coast passes I tried. We have to remember there are a lot of groups trying to make a sat contact for the points, that don't read this SIG, so they just try calling on the V/U frequencies. I'm for L/U. It would be cool to try L/S, but I think I was told it isn't possible because it wouldn't leave a channel for control?
73 Jeff kb2m
-----Original Message----- From: amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org] On Behalf Of Alan P. Biddle Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 8:50 AM To: AMSAT-BB Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Field Day AO-51 configuration - another option
One thing I would like to see tried, perhaps for one FD as a test, would be to relax the restrictions on FM mode contacts where one or both of the frequencies is above 70 cm. That would certainly encourage people to try L/U or V/S. Based on last year's numbers, every L/U station could have worked every other station easily, given the shortness of a FD QSO. Considering that people manage to work these modes portable, and in the case of N5AFV, mobile, it is relatively easy to get on. The mode-S downlink is truly loud, easily overcoming the general 2.45 GHz QRM/QRN.
Alan WA4SCA
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