Hi Zach & Rich,
According to the https://www.amsat.org/two-way-satellites/ communication satellite page, XW-2A, -2B, and -2F are the operable XW sats. The others are inoperable and do odd things, like what Zach reports.
2A, 2B and 2F have been pretty successful for me in the past week, but they aren't always very active.
73, Bob, WB4SON
On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 12:51 PM Zach Metzinger via AMSAT-BB < amsat-bb@amsat.org> wrote:
On 2020-01-28 18:29, RG via AMSAT-BB wrote:
I have had trouble hearing XW satellites lately.I have a Kenwood ts 2000
and for some reason don't hearing much if anything.I used to hear the beacon pretty loud at least for a few moments and most of the pass okay but not as much.I was wondering if other Op's. are having the same problem.Maybe I need to set up my 706 as a receive radio,It worked good.I dont have any problems with the Kenwood working other modes.It would be nice to use one radio.I run a vertical and realize it's not the best set up but again I haven't had this problem in the past.Just looking for some opinions.Thanks a lot73RichKB1FGC
marzo7088@yahoo.com
Hello RG,
Having just gotten a 2m antenna set up, which has been sitting in the shed for years, I did hear XW-2E today.
The CW beacon was doing odd things, like stopping mid-key and then returning to transmit with an upward-sweeping constant tone before resuming the CW beacon.
It might be that they're hitting some sort of low-voltage reset condition and coming back online when the load is briefly removed.
All of this was heard with a 2m copper-pipe J-pole at perhaps 15 feet in the attic, attached to ~40 feet of RG-8X. The beacon was easily copyable from 1-2 degrees to 22 degrees (highest elevation for the pass). A small J310 preamp awaits installation on another day.
Ideally, you'll want some sort of directional-gain antenna for receive. Ken Britain has a simple DIY antenna that can be assembled on the cheap:
https://www.wa5vjb.com/references/Cheap%20Antennas-LEOs.pdf
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