May be a note of interest. First chance I had to try and work the new bird and noticed that I had similar problems to the drop outs as previously mentioned. However, in my case I discovered at the end of the pass that I had forgotten to turn on the tone! I wonder how many may still may not have their tone enabled or wrong tone frequency?

I also noticed that the bird was quite strong on the arrangement I was using and did not bother to turn on the receive preamp. I was using my IC-910 running one watt for the up link on a Ringo Ranger II vertical and my down link antenna was a two meter simple ground plane which seems to work well on the satellite frequencies. It is obviously three time larger in wave length for 70cm and narrow (only has good swr on the satellite frequencies) but does surprisingly well.

I also wonder is some of the the drop outs might be due to the tones over deviating on signals and not known since they are not heard. Suggested narrow FM would probably reduce that particular problem.

Way to go Amsat-SA looking forward to more "on" time and sounds very good.

Reid, W4UPD

John Papay wrote:

Audio is on my webserver:

http://www.papays.com/SO-67_22Nov2009_141052z.mp3

Lots of activity as usual. I noted a slightly stronger signal on the downlink on Left Hand Polarization.

73, John K8YSE