Amusing anecdote of a day-in-the-life of a ham:

I Just saw this on AMSAT-bb:

I managed to get digipeated via the 9600 system during the 10.52utc UK pass.

Ah ha! Now that explains my morning!:

This morning as we prepare to restore PCSAT for operations when it comes into full sun, I tried to logon as usual. The logon proceess went OK, but seemed "different" than usual. Then I realized I had logged on accidently via the UHF uplink and at 9600 baud! (because the radio was accidentally left in 9600). I have never used that login technique before in 7 years of operating PCSAT.

SO I thought, wow, that was nice.... So I'll just send the first most important restoration command and see how this goes... That first command is always "00110111" to turn off the two spare UHF receivers which are a constant drain on the battery and why Pcsat cannot remain power positive without help.

The link seemed to fail, and I began to notice lots of retries on my end..... Duh... Turning off the 9600 baud UHF backup receivers when that's what I used to connect with was not the smartest thing to do.

Anyway, I got re-connected on 2m and 1200 baud and proceeded to turn off additional loads and beacons. But I was still hearing an occasional 9600 baud burst, and couldn't figure out what I had left on.

So now I realize the 9600 baud bursts I was hearing was not from PCSAT but from ISS. And since the report above says they were on 145.800, probably I was hearing them from another radio in the shack that is always monitioring the ISS downlink on .800. I just checked Instantrack and sure enough, ISS and PCSAT were in view at the same time.

This will be fun. I suppose we could turn on one UHF 9600 baud link on PCSAT if anyone wanted to play with it. PCSAT can cross digipeat from 1200 to 1200, 1200 to 9600 or 9600 to 1200 or from VHF-to-VHF or UHF-to-VHF. We just have never found much more use for it other than the usual simplex 145.825 digipeating. SO much simpler to explain that way.

Bob, Wb4APR