On 24/10/2011 14:31, David Palmer KB5WIA wrote:
Hi Richard,
. I am using a yeasu g-5500 rotator with the AMSAT controller and ham radio deluxe. Kenwood ts-2000 for the rig and a 8 element 440 and a 4 element 2 meter antenna. The antennas are currently linear polarized since my phasing cables still have not arrived from the manufacturer.
Good setup!
My questions are, is AO-27 difficult to work? Is it on a schedule? Any ideas why I could not raise or hear it?
Yes, it's on a schedule -- check the status page on www.amsat.org to see when it comes on and off. It comes on at mid-latitudes by a timer, so for an overhead pass in your area you *should* have heard it .... other things to check would be that the keps are current, and that there weren't any glitches during that particular pass (ie. maybe radios briefly stopped tuning). Try again, it's a nice loud sat.
As for SO-50: Should I be listening 5khz down? Ham radio deluxe is controlling the radio frequencies and I made a custom entry for 5khz down and corrected for Doppler. This still did not seem to help.
I've found SO-50 about 5kHz-8kHz down, so listen down a little. Remember the tone on the uplink too. Also, I've seen quite a few posts that the TS-2000 has a birdie right at the high end of SO-50's downlink, so you may have a better chance hearing it later in the pass as doppler moves the downlink away from the birdie.
I have a virtually identical set up but with a FT-847 radio. I get AO-27 but with HRD I do find I have to tune about to get the receive - 5 to 10Khz. Wierdly I find it _much_ easier to work the SSB sats with the set up than I do the FM ones - sounds like you have the same issue.
Dominic G6NQO