I stand corrected on that... and better educated. (Also helps me understand the way the transponder has acted at various times that didn't previously make sense to me.) I supposed it could be desense or some other reason that you don't hear yourself then, but hopefully understanding that you are HEARING it will move you down the road to figuring it out and making contacts. =^)
Actually the PL tone on AO-85 just turns the repeater on. Once it's on, there's no tone required until it times out...that's why you hear the noise on the uplink.
73, Drew KO4MA
On Feb 28, 2017, at 5:11 PM, Kevin M via AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb at amsat.org> wrote:
Hi Mike, I don't believe there is anything wrong with your receive... the 'static' you hear IS the AO-85 downlink. The transmitter is on and transmitting and the signal strength is going up and down due to 'tumbling', ploarity shifting, etc. The reason you hear static is that it's not like SO-50; instead of squelching when there is no signal, AO-85 simply rebroadcasts what it hears... which at the moment is 'nothing', SO it is passing the white noise from it's UHF receiver straight to the 2m transmitter. Eventually you heard a voice there at the end, so yes, you ARE hearing it. If I read the TS-2000 manual correctly, your problem is that you have the PL tone set on the receive band... not the transmit band. The 'T' should be above the sub band display in other words. So since you are not transmitting the proper PL tone of 67.0 Hz, you are not able to hear yourself come through the transponder. See about fixing that and give it another try. And from experience, I'll suggest to double check that even after you get the 'T' on the correct band, verify that it's 67.0 Hz. =^) 73, Kevin N4UFO