Hello Francesco,
The 437.024 transmitter antenna configuration on AO-16 is Left Hand Circular polarity (LHCP). The receiving antenna on the bird is a 1/4 wave vertical whip.
The fading is quite dramatic, which means the bird is spinning/tumbling, or some combination. We could never hear this before on AO-16 when it was transmitting its normal PSK signal, since we didn't hear the effect of fading on the uplink in this mode. Now we hear it, loud and clear!
It does take an uplink signal that is pretty close to on frequency (145.820). Adjusting for Doppler is helpful thing on the uplink.
Doppler on the 435 DSB downlink will make you love (or covet) a computer controlled VFO :)
It's so much fun to be a part of this NOW, on AO-16's 18th birthday---I vividly recall the launch and commissioning 18 years ago---THANKS to the folks that put them all together and got them in the air!!
73,
Mark N8MH AO-16 Command Team
Hello, I tried AO-16 too on one pass, noise level is high and also I noticed a very deep fading I could not compensate with H/V polarity switch. This is the only LEO I ever found difficult to access so far, I'm going to test other known sat to check my setup, maybe the problem is only here. I also found difficult to tune some stations, the audio never come good as if the modulation was distorted, I don't know if others had the same results. I've never had problems with linear sats however. I'll try again tomorrow.
73 Francesco IZ8DWF
Mark L. Hammond [N8MH]