Greetings!
Being smart would be cool, but sometimes it's just easier to be lucky.
Since the launch of AISAT-1, I have really struggled to get digipeated thru that satellite. At best, I could get in a single digipeat but only at the exact moment of closest approach on a high pass. Armed with seeing that repeatedly, I thought doppler tracking the 145.825 FM uplink might help, but it did not.
So tonight (4-July UTC), by pure coincidence, there was a high pass of AISAT-1 immediately following a pass of PSAT-2. Following Bob's (WB4APR) recommendation to use NARROW-FM on PSAT-2 (worked well), I thought "what the heck", I'll leave my radio set on NARROW-FM for the pass of AISAT-1 as well. I'll even doppler track the AISAT-1 uplink while I'm at it.
Boom. Got digipeated left and right. Well before and after closest approach, I got digipeated. I didn't go crazy since I'm always so afraid of blocking out other people on a simplex satellite, but I hit it enough to see the night & day difference from what I'd been experiencing since deployment.
If it's in the docs somewhere I missed it, but is sure seems to me that, like PSAT-2, AISAT-1 might very well be equipped with a NARROW-FM radio.
It would be great to see if others find as much improvement as I did, so I hope some folks will try AISAT-1 using NARROW-FM on the 145.825 APRS digipeater.
73,
-Scott, K4KDR