Hi!
I found the FM birds to be much more orderly than in years past. I thought that the one station who was handing out quick contacts to the others worked very well. The REAL annoyance was the guy who was trying to play traffic cop over the satellite saying "one contact per station!" over and over and over again.
Having only one other Field Day to compare the FM satellites with (last year), it seemed a little better. Still with some stations making long HF- style CQ calls, but I was able to make my contact on each of the FM satellites (no L-band uplink, otherwise my Field Day log would have totaled 4 QSOs).
BTW, did anyone else hear some music being played over SO-50 during the first FD pass, at about 1900Z?
Unless it came on after 1902 UTC, I heard nothing on that pass. I made my first contact on there, and just replayed my recording to make sure my memory wasn't faulty. Just the standard fare of long CQ calls, lots of stations trying to get through, and some stations making more than one contact.
Along with a contact on the first SO-50 pass during Field Day, I made my other contacts on AO-27 Saturday afternoon at 2352 UTC (last AO-27 pass I could work within Field Day, and I was still in Phoenix for that pass) and AO-51 at 1618 UTC (last pass I could work during Field Day). I was east of Flagstaff AZ, grid DM45fe, in the Walnut Canyon National Monument, for those AO-51 passes. I also made satellite contacts as W7ON, my father-in-law's call, which was the call we used on HF from his Jeep while driving through central and northern Arizona.
I had tried to make my AO-51 contact on the Sunday morning pass at 1435-1445 UTC, but the forest and nearby hills and mountains in Flagstaff didn't help with the low pass.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/