Whenever I do a satellite demo with my 910H, Gulf Alpha CP antennas, az/el rotors, and computer control, I always take along an HT and a tape measure beam & show my audience that the FM birds *can* be worked with a much simpler setup.
HOWEVER, I always stress the same rule of thumb that applies to HF operations: "if you can't hear 'em, you can't work 'em", so if they *don't* hear the bird, STOP trying, and find & fix the problem...
George, KA3HSW
----- Original Message ----
From: John Geiger aa5jg@fidmail.com To: Clint Bradford clintbradford@mac.com Cc: AMSAT BB amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Fri, January 20, 2012 1:55:57 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Getting "Cheep" ...
I do think we need to be careful that we don't send the message that you must have a complex (and expensive) station to work the FM sats. I wouldn't want someone interested in the sats to give up because they thought they needed circularly polarized yagis, elevations rotors, mast mounted preamps, and computer control for doppler shift.
[snip]