Hello all,
I was attempting to make some contacts on the 1230UTC pass of AO-51 this morning, from the mobile on my way to work. We have a bit of a commuter roundtable on 2m in the morning and I invited some of the others to tune in to see what we could hear.
The downlink was weak enough that the pass was at best barely workable, but right at the beginning I did have a good enough signal to copy that a station came back to my call. I didn't copy the call though, so it was not a contact but it appears that I was heard well enough on the uplink... so I would appreciate it if the station(s) who heard me would let me know what my uplink signal quality was, that I can determine whether it's worth it to try to work the bird again during a "commute" pass.
If so maybe I'll consider a preamp in the mobile... ;-)
And if the uplink was OK then perhaps on some future closer passes I'll have the opportunity to get some of my fellow commuters on the bird!
Thanks and 73, Jerry N0JY
Lots of replies, thank you all for your responses. My friends and I spent a while on the commute home discussing the various reports and suggestions, and in fact I'm pretty interested in trying the quadrifilar helix that Allen mentioned for a mobile downlink antenna. I had been thinking about such an antenna and seen some ads for that on various ham websites, and with that report it looks like it would be fun to try. Perhaps just taking my FT-817 along with a preamp hooked to that antenna for downlink and continuing to uplink on my 2m mobile. Not wanting to complicate things too much, is my basic idea. Just an opportunity to work some passes on the way to work or home perhaps, during the 50 minute drive. So I'll probably try the mobile again and see about the qfh (if that's a valid abbreviation) antenna too, in the near future. And the hook has sunk deep into at least one other ham commute friend, to try some mobile satellite work too!
73, Jerry N0JY
On 12/2/2010 7:34 AM, n0jy@lavabit.com wrote:
Hello all,
I was attempting to make some contacts on the 1230UTC pass of AO-51 this morning, from the mobile on my way to work. We have a bit of a commuter roundtable on 2m in the morning and I invited some of the others to tune in to see what we could hear.
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