--- On Tue, 2/9/10, Auke de Jong, VE6PWN sparkycivic@shaw.ca wrote:
From: Auke de Jong, VE6PWN sparkycivic@shaw.ca Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: AO-51 Signal Strength Post Flip To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Received: Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 9:42 PM Another observation from DO33 (yo Bernhardt),
Greetings. It's nice to hear from a fellow Edmontonian.
I've always had trouble
hearing this bird well enough to work from my home station, as I have my antennas at fixed elevation, and manually-rotated via channelmaster... AO-51 has been consistently easier to hear AFTER it has passed overhead on ascending passes. Between AOS and peak-elevation, it's always just above my noise. I don't have any observations about descending passes because I'm not up early enough to try those;) . I also can't say how that compares to pre-flip, as I never heard it well enough to work, except on very low passes, and didn't keep notes.
I live beside one of the biggest shopping centres in the city and I've got no obstructions from due N to nearly due NW for lower elevation passes. At much higher angles, I can follow it from nearly directly overhead to SSW.
In the past, I could tell when AO-51 was within view because the background noise would drop significantly. Since I'm operating a portable station, I use that to track it. Lately, it hasn't been as easy.
I actually had the bird all to myself a fewweeks ago, while everyone from the USA already had LOS, and I had almost full-quieting for many minutes in a row that time, until my LOS. This is what struck me as being a significant observation!
I've noticed that it's been rather quiet during later morning passes (say, after 1500 UTC).
<snip>
BTW, were you at the flea market at the Yellowhead Inn this past Saturday? I've been to each one since I got my callsign 5 years ago and I'm sure that this one had the most people. I was looking for a manual HF + 6 m tuner but couldn't fine one, but there were lots of other items that I bought that I could use.
It was a good opportunity to meet hams in person that I'd spoken to by radio, including some from local nets. It was certainly a good way to spend two hours.
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