Bryan Green wrote:
This is fun. It's inspiring! I keep imagining the science curriculum that could be written around this! I want to show it to my high-school age cousins!
It's great, isn't it?
Of course, I aspire to a lovely ground station with a wonderful computer-controlled high-power VHF/UHF transceiver and a fabulous antenna array mounted on rotors on a tower. But this manual operation makes it fun! I walk around outside on the sidewalk, moving the tripod so it has the best view of the pass. I make a complete fool of myself as I juggle the HT, the notebook with coordinates, the flashlight, and my cellphone to check the time. (Note to self: petition Icom to put a clock chip in their HTs -- obvious?) What a hoot!
Heh. I think handheld operation is the best, especially if you get a couple of good clear passes and AO-51 in QRP mode. While I'd like to have a whole load of steerable aerials and all the goodies, standing there with a handheld and a homebrew cross dipole just seems more hardcore ;-)
Gordon