It looks like the commonly adopted block conversion for C-band transponders wouldn't land in our bands. There seems to be a delta for 2.2 GHz for the block conversion (e.g. 5.9 GHz up, 3.7 GHz down). We'd need more like a 4 GHz conversion to land in our S-band, given a 5.8 GHz uplink. I'm sure the filters aren't quite tuned to go below out of band, either.

Another issue I just realized is that these transponders use polarized signals (left, right, vertical, horizontal, polka-dotted)....this again makes using an old communications sat a bit more difficult (but not impossible) for us hams.

Looks like this was not meant to be!

73,

Dave NøTGD

On 1/28/07, Karl Bullock karl@bullock.org wrote:

Dave hartzell wrote:

...

3. Most of the uplink freq's are in the 5.9 GHz range (out of our

allocation) and downlink in the 3.7 GHz range, again, (out of our allocation).

That may be _the_ problem. I don't know the current capabilities of these birds, and if they have any capability of either "retuning" to a close amateur band, or if there are other assets on board, but inability to transmit/receive on one of our bands would probably make this a non sequitur. Those with more intimate knowledge of current flying technology would need to speak to this.