Americans don't appreciate the vastness of the Pacific. I remember when a colleague was leaving my firm in New Orleans to move to Guam. She said the flight would take 24 hours. I said, "Why 24 hours? My flight to Hawaii was only 11 hours, and Guam is right next to Hawaii." However, Guam is not "right next" to Hawaii. The distance between Hawaii and Guam is further than the distance between Guam and New Orleans.
Steve, hope you can find some folks to work from Guam, should be fun.
73, Bill NZ5N
Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: KH2? Message-ID: 7042281.1025930.1334660212913.JavaMail.root@vms170029 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
A couple of people have responded to me, but it's not clear that the geography and geometry is obvious to everyone.
From
all I've read, the maximum distance anyone has worked AO-27 is about 3300 miles. This distance is limited by the altitude of the satellite. (My calculation of the AO-27 footprint diameter at apogee is 3775 miles, but that would imply a zero-duration window with a satellite at the exact midpoint. 3300 miles seems reasonable to allow time for a short QSO.)
Guam is about 3800 miles WSW of Honolulu, so even that path is not possible, let alone anything on North America. Possibilities within a 3000 mile range appear to be places like Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines, maybe Australia, etc.
Steve Melachrinos W3HF/KH2 (for the next 12 days)