Ed,

Congrats, it seems like you are in business if you heard the bird down to the horizon. HO-68 is louder, in some cases much louder, than most of the other sats, so check some others. If you can copy SO-50 to the horizon, then leave your antenna alone, it's working great.

I measured a maximum of 20w directly at the antenna, and Elk claims a gain of 6.6 dbd on 2m, which would mean an ERP of 90 watts. I do not need full power at high elevations.

73, Bill NZ5N

From: Edward Cole kl7uw@acsalaska.net Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: New Lindy's QRV To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Message-ID: 201002092025.o19KPAPG010369@huffman.acsalaska.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

One more update:

I tried pass #744, this morning and copied a big round-table of several west-coast stations, but was unable to break in.  My downlink was as loud as them, so...?  I had one call to my CQ right at LOS and could not complete, sorry!  Bear with me as I am getting reaquainted with running my radio on satellites ;-)  My sub-VFO tuning control is not working which complicates netting with another station.  So I find my signal with the Rx and then engage tracking.  That tracks for a little while.

The interesting thing is that I copied signals to zero-elevation.  I would say that I am pleased with the new antennas.

Question: what ERP are most stations using on SSB on HO-68?  I am running 50w ERP.

73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45