I'm having to sell off my gear because of very little time to operate and some pressing debts. Are IRB's a possible way for me to make an occasional sat contact? Just Curious, Michael , W4HIJ Tony Langdon wrote:
At 03:29 AM 4/27/2007, you wrote:
Perhaps this is all about goals then ... if your goal is to simply communicate via a satellite, then the remote base concept is perfectly valid and it has been demonstrated that it works.
If the goal is to learn how to build a groundstation and then optimize it for use with satellites, then I'm not sure this will do that (unless of course you are the one building the station).
I think you're right. Goals are where it's at, and being in the other VoIP games in town (IRLP, Echolink and friends), I regularly encounter the same debate. If my goal is to simply communicate via some (at least partly) amateur controlled medium, these modes and IRBs are fine, whether I have RF or a PC on my end. OTOH, if my goal is to play with RF, investigate propagation and setup a working satellite ground station, then it's time to pull out some radio gear, antennas and rotators and put them on the air (though for long and complicated reasons, I'm also likely to interface that to IRLP or my own IRB, because where I have the best space to erect antennas is 24km from where I mostly operate).
I see it like a calculator and a slide rule ... the calculator works great, you just punch in some numbers and the correct result pops out. But the slide rule allows one to see the underlying mathematics taking shape as it is moved to the same answer.
Which way is "better" must be self-determined.
Exactly, horses for courses. :)
73 de VK3JED http://vkradio.com