Hi Clint!
Good to see you at Palm Springs yesterday. Weather was great, and it was nice to see a few other satellite operators (WA6DIR, KO6TZ, KB5WIA, WA6ARA) out there. Made the 624-mile day-trip worth it.
Patrick showed up, after driving straight through from Arizona. Well, not really - he actually stopped at least one time to work a pass from the road.
I actually stopped twice on the way to Palm Springs. I left home at 3am Pacific time (1100 UTC), and made a fuel/food stop at Quartzsite in western Arizona about two hours later. I had printed out all the pass times for the day, so I knew AO-7 was in mode B and passing by at 1315 UTC. I worked that pass, making two QSOs in the glow of the large McDonalds sign next to me and the I-10 freeway. I got back on the freeway, then drove about 90 minutes more to a point about 20 miles east of Indio. No fuel or food stop, or much of anything at that freeway exit, but an opportunity to work another AO-7 pass followed a few minutes later by a VO-52 pass. This exit was about 35 miles east of the hamfest, and I drove the remaining distance and went to the hamfest.
Then it came time to work the first of two passes of AO-27 for the day. Patrick and I re-checked the AO-27 schedule, and re-re- checked our pass data. All was well. The sat was there - but never came ON for us.
K8YSE"s web site now has a recording from yesterday's 2005 UTC AO-27 pass.
No - '27 wasn't ON for the second pass, either. But the attendees were inquisitive and we shared a bunch of information.
The later pass wasn't in range of K8YSE to record, but AA5PK posted on the KD5QGR status page that it was on.
After the second AO-27 pass, I tried working FO-29 from the parking lot. This was around 2211 UTC, and the satellite was up to a maximum elevation of 39 degrees to the east. Even with the mountains in that direction and around the southern end of the hamfest site, I should have heard this satellite. I never heard a thing during that pass.
I saw a couple of guys doing an ATV demonstration walking around the hamfest - someone with a camera, and another person with a portable LCD TV watching the video. Since there was no converter being used with that TV, I figured it was using one of the 70cm ATV channels that can be picked up with a cable-ready analog cable tuner. If that ATV transmitter was on 434 MHz and close to the demonstration, could that have wiped out the 435-438 MHz satellite subband? ("Close" as in no more than 10 to 20 yards away) I'm not saying this was intentional, but seeing what happened has had me thinking about it for the past day or so.
SO-50 "bailed me out" for the day with two wonderful passes to close the show. The last one was actually about a half-hour after the 'fest officially ended - but there were plenty of stragglers and vendors left to come over and watch working SO-50. We worked Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Ontario (CA), and even worked Patrick - who had left earlier, but stopped alongside the road to work us.
I've heard from a couple of people that there has been a KD5WEK working SO-50 passes this weekend from Texas. His name is not Patrick.
It pays to listen carefully when you hear certain calls.... did you work WD9EWK or KD5WEK? These two calls should be a little easier to separate than some other pairs of calls. For example, KO4MA or K4MOA? N8MS or N8MH? NX9B or NX9G? All of these calls are of satellite operators, who have been on at least occasionally in recent times. (Thanks to Clayton W5PFG for pointing this out to me)
After I left Palm Springs, I didn't stop until I made it to a spot 25 miles north of Quartzsite AZ on the DM23/DM24 grid boundary in time for a VO-52 pass at 0225 UTC. I was hurrying to make that 2 1/2-hour drive without trying to set new land speed records in my truck. :-) After that pass, I still had almost 3 more hours before I made it back home, including another fuel/food stop back in Quartzsite.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/