I remember Echo very well. As Domenico stated it was very visible. I remember my father taking my siblings and I outside to view. He certainly had my attention then.
73, Bill NJ1H
On 6/29/2010 2:05 PM, i8cvs wrote:
Hi Greg, KO6TH
Echo-1 A was a passive communication satellite launched on 12 august 1960 in a circular orbit at 1519 - 1687 km and it was a balloon 30.5 meters in diameter made of 0.0127 mm thick metallized mylar polyester film to reflects signals transmitted from the earth at 960 MHz and 2390 MHz
Echo-1 A was also carrying two VHF TLM beacons at 108.000 and 108.03 MHz with a power of 45 mW and I was receiving both of them for several days using a homebrewed downconverter with two low noise triodes 6AN4 in a cascode input stage and a simple three elements yagi.
At that epoch time the 108 MHz band was used only for aeronautical and space communications but not for FM broadcasting as novadays so that it was free of interfering signals and man made noise and the only existing noise was the galactic noise.
By the way in the early 1960 it was my first received satellite signal and it was very exiting to receive the 45 mW beacons using only a three elements yagi and a downconverter with a noise figure at best of 6 dB while to see the balloon as a bright star by naked eye flying in the night.
For more technical informations on ECHO-1 ,ECHO-1A and ECHO-2 look at the following web page:
http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/QuickLooks/echoQL.html
73" de
i8CVS Domenico
----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg D."[email protected] To:[email protected];[email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 7:03 AM Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: HF Satellite Relay