Please, PLEASE! If someone is on a J-FM satellite with rare-to-uncommon grid square(s), don't contact people you have worked before, especially those you've worked often. If you do, then people like the Swan Island DXpedition won't bother with satellite as it won't be worth carrying the equipment.
Last week, I was about 30 feet (10m) from a grid square corner on private property, and i was only able to give out two of the four grid squares (at least one was uncommon-to-rare) because of the chaos on AO-27 that pass. Since i record all nearly all J-FM passes, i was planning to take contacts three at a time from two grid square boundaries; but that just wasn't possible. So i don't think i even got everyone from the northern grid square pair.
PLEASE, on transcontinental passes and especially with very rare grids, save your routine traffic for other time. In most places, there are lots of other passes (especially on SO-50) where there were very few people on. I was at CN85/CN86 yesterday on SO-50 and there was only one station to work! 'Regulars', instead of chatting with your fiends, please briefly explain the situation and/or suggest that people work the uncommon/rare grids [as several 'regulars' do already]. Many folks don't have the time (or bandwidth) to read AMSAT-BB.
Hope to talk to you on the way south through central Oregon and perhaps eastern California. I'm still hoping for at least one grid square corner. And please wait until after the Swan Islands are out of the footprint to work me. 73's and good luck!
-- KD6PAG
____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs