Bill,
I was getting set up for the transponder on that pass, and did hear both myself, and a VE? calling CQ. Signals in both cases were good, but variable. The CW beacon on 145.870 is very strong.
Two points. I found that the uplink needed to be quite a bit higher in frequency to hit the nominal center of the passband. I have seen the number 435.556 to hit 145.900, but I found it was more like 435.561. Definitely not a station calibration issue. So next time, hunt around a bit. Second, I found it easy to overload the uplink. When looking around, I had the TX power up, and noticed that the first syllable came back strong, but the downlink dropped off immediately until I backed waaaay off on the power. I wasn't sure whether it was AGC action, or a SC power issue. Anyway, I found it required very little power to get in without saturating it.
Alan WA4SCA