Hi Paul!
Maybe I'm just confused, but isn't making a 2 way contact the point of working satellites? This evenings pass of AO-51 made me want to pack up my satellite gear and sell it on ebay. I haven't been on the sat's in while and I unpacked the arrow and TH-d7 tonight to make sure it was still working. I listened to a pass of AO-51 and it was absolutely crazy. Do you people have any common sense? What is the point of calling you call over and over again if nobody can answer you because everyone else is doing the same? I think I may have heard 2 complete contacts for a 8 minute pass....... There is no point in anyone trying to make a contact with a hand held - all the BIG guns will be covering you with pointless calling..... What gives?
Like others have pointed out, this is Field Day for the FM satellites. Like it or not, that's what we have to deal with. Never mind the errors in the June QST insert, some treat the FM satellites just like a station on 20m phone - set up shop, call CQ, and run tons of power. I saw this for the first time last year, and I only used my IC-W32A HT and Arrow Antennas handheld Yagi. Tough to get through on AO-51, but I did on passes late Saturday night and one on Sunday morning.
Don't forget SO-50. I was on an SO-50 pass around 0445 UTC tonight, one covering western North America. Only two other stations showed up. SO-50 was not mentioned in the QST Field Day insert, and last year it was easier to make contacts on there than on either of the V/U repeaters AO-51 had running. We also have AO-27 available this year, but with only a handful of passes that fall within the Field Day time, I'd expect a crowd to still show up for those 7-minute passes.
By the way, you may hear my voice as W7ON and WD9EWK this weekend. W7ON is my father-in-law, and we are going to work mobile from his Jeep. With his call, we'll be 1C-AZ from somewhere north of Phoenix working mostly HF but also hoping to make one satellite QSO for the bonus. If we are stopped in time for satellite passes, WD9EWK will show up as a 1B-AZ station running QRP power just like I did last year. I'll keep a GPS receiver handy, since anything other than passes shortly after the 1800 UTC start will be outside the Phoenix area and could be in an unusual (for Arizona) grid.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/