Hi Patrick:
I work solely wit an HT, a Kenwood TH-D7AG nowadays, and either an Arrow antenna or an Elk antenna, no pre-amp whatsoever. I have no complaints about the reception of AO-51. I hear it loud and clear and I have had long distance contacts, all the way to the west coast, Guadeloupe, Venezuela and yet unconfirmed ones to Mexico and Guatemala and many shorter distance ones. To me this may suggest that the problem is not in the downlink power from Echo but somewhere on your side.
If anything, I found out lately that I now can work lower passes than I ever was able to. This seems to match the date when I started working the Kenwood TH-D7AG which I believe is more sensitive on Rx than the Yaesu VX-7 that I used before. I've worked passes at 7 degrees now whereas before 12 degrees was the best I could do from not from my QTH, but hoofing it as high as I could uphill. Canopy is still up so that is not a factor yet.
And I do live in the country so I may be lucky there according to Pat's post.
McGrane wrote:
greetings
I would like to report very poor reception of echo even with an 8 element yagi and an 18 Db preamp. I assume the downlink power is real flea power for battery charging or other testing.
73, patrick N2OEQ 32323