First of all: thanks to everyone who replied, on-list or off, for all the helpful comments, kind welcomes, and offers for skeds. What a great group!
Early yesterday evening I listened for a pass of AO-51 and then another one of the FM birds, forget which. (I had only planned on the first, but the second came overhead almost immediately afterwards while I was still outside.) Again, didn't hear anything. I had to give up on working sats for the day after that; it was time for my weekly poker group.
Tonight I got home from work too late for any passes (well, at least ones
12 degrees of elevation). But I noticed a few things:
* the SWR of the 70cm section was really high. I don't have any absolute measurements -- the only SWR "meter" I have good at 70cm is the one built in to the FT817ND -- but it was practically full scale. * occasionally it jumped down and then back up if I shook the antenna.
So I desoldered the coax. Then I noticed I hadn't gotten the dimensions of the driven element quite right -- I had bent the brass rod into a tighter corner than WA5VJB specifies -- about 3/4" instead of 1". So I bent and un-bent and re-bent things for a while until I wound up much closer to 1".
After I re-soldered, I'm now seeing 0 bars of SWR on the '817 in the vicinity of 435MHz. Hopefully this was the issue, and not just *a* issue...
My full setup is: FT817ND with internal battery poorly-constructed WA5VJB yagi, 2el on 2m, 4el on 70cm, elements made of brass hobby rod and each band mounted perpendicular (Arrow-style) no diplexer, just using both antenna ports on the 817. (May soon try 817+HT for full-duplex.) on an Android phone: HamSatDroid for tracking, Compass app, and Voice Recorder
vy 73! and thanks again! -chris N2YYZ FN42