[amsat-bb] Re: FW: Re: AO-7 is not OK

Once the bird was out of eclipse, the signals were almost normal, but not for the entire pass. I also worked W7LRD for a few seconds at 5 degrees.

73 de W4AS

AO-7 is in sunlight 24/7 at the moment. If it was in eclipse you would not hear anything at all. It is however riding the terminator for a good portion of the orbit. I need to run some predictions and see when/if it returns to eclipses this summer.

It's likely that the orientation is just poor right now, and not much power is being generated by the panels to run the transponder. It would be interesting to see if when signals are poor on the Mode B transponder, is the 435 beacon on?

73, Drew KO4MA AMSAT-NA VP Operations