Hi Les,
I have my Oscar Locator tucked away in a box from a move -- will need to dig it out. I remember being maybe a half hour away from a pass and fumbling with the locator to get a better estimate of the time. I finished with the locator right about when the pass began, so I wasn't the fastest with it. If I recall, it required a list of equatorial crossing times (one per day per satellite) that was published in QST. Don't recall if they sent them via bulletin. But after you saw a list of values, you could predict future ones fairly well.
Can't imagine using that for 16+ different birds today, but it is fun to look back when there was only one (or a few). I think mine was for OSCAR 6, and there were later versions that did additional birds.
I only found one reference to using it: http://amsat.org/pipermail/amsat-bb/2016-May/058803.html
If you ever come up with instructions, please share!
73, Bob, WB4SON
On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 6:44 PM Les Rayburn [email protected] wrote:
Today’s mail brought me a vintage cardboard “OSCAR-Locator” purchased on QRZ.com. Also included was a back issue of the Amateur Satellite Report newsletter, Number 154 from July 27, 1987.
I love collecting items related to the history of amateur satellites. The OSCAR-Locator is really neat—I’m digging through back issues of QST now trying to learn how to actually use it. Don’t think I’ll be giving up SatPC32 anytime soon however.
Remember back even further when hams plotted satellite passes using a string and a globe? Remember watching my elmer, Ron Murray WA4IWN (SK) do that back in the day.
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF Maylene, AL EM63nf AMSAT #38965, ARRL Life Member, CVHS Life Member, SVHF Member
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