On 8/31/06, McGrane [email protected] wrote:
Hi gould- thanks for information. Hopefully the command team will manage to eeck out a little more power. I'm not just thinking of myself. As I recall, one of the purposes of echo was to attract new people ( myself included ) with an easy to operate satellite. After 2 years, I now use an 8 element beam and preamp to hear echo. Take care, pat
As one of the new people who was attracted to sats in general and AMSAT in particular by Echo I'd just like to say it has worked to attract me at least. I got interested in sats just days before Echo launched and it was the first sat I had a confirmed QSO on. Right now though I'm only active when I'm out and about since I don't have a rotor for my antenna and haven't been impressed with the performance of Omni antennas on any of the FM LEO's, and I got tired of my neighbors staring at me as I waved antennas around in my driveway...but I've consistently found Echo to be the easiest to hear.
Heck I've listened to passes with just an Alinco DJ-C5 and the joke of an antenna that it comes with! It takes a good ear and some funny looking waving around to find the sweet spot but even so it amazes me at just how little antenna is needed to hear this sat. I usually use a 4el Yagi I built based off of VE6AB's handheld design ( http://va6bc.no-ip.com/jerry_pix/yagi/handheld_yagi.htm) and find it's so easy to recieve Echo that it's almost no fun! Before I built my current antenna I used a 3el yagi I built in 15 minutes for free out of junk I found in my garage based on K5OE's design ( http://members.aol.com/k5oejerry/handi-tenna.htm) and even that worked great on Echo. It was a challenge to hear AO-27 and SO-50 was hit or miss.
With my current homemade 4el antenna it's so easy I've stopped operating from home as there just isn't enough challenge to it to keep me interested. I now pretty much only bother to operate when I'm camping unless a friend wants me to demonstrate in town. With my current antenna I can hear AO-27,SO-50 and Echo all extremely easily. The hardest part is not trying too hard in regards to aiming and tuning - I tend to overcorrect too much and have to keep reminding myself to relax and not make things harder than they have to be since it seems too easy.
I sometimes wonder if people are overthinking this and making it harder on themselves than it has to be. I borrowed an arrow from a friend for awhile and really didn't care for it. It was heavier and had a tighter pattern than my homemade antennas both of which combined to make it harder to use. The s meter in my FT-470 isn't a super accurate test instrument but switching between my 4el homemade antenna and the arrow I had no difference in readings even at low elevations. However I did find it MUCH easier to aim the smaller antenna.
One of these days I'll come up with a rotator setup and be able to armchair operate....and when I do I'll probably just whip up a 3el yagi and run it at a fixed elevation as I've found it's got plenty of gain to work the current crop of FM sats.
Of course with the sat in V/S today I can't verify that it's still that easy to hear as it's been a few week since I listened to a pass. And I still haven't finished getting my S downconverter ready to go...need to find someone here in Yuma, AZ who has more experience with the higher freqencies to help me out still.
---- Jason Hitesman N8INJ