AMSAT FD 2014 debrief
Using a modest set-up, I was able to give our local club (W1BIM) their bonus satellite contact on FO-29 Saturday afternoon (thanks to the team at W1AW/3). It was on the third pass attempt.
I ran a FT-847 barefoot with an 11 ele yagi on 436 and a 3 ele yagi on 2m. I ran SatPC32 with the custom exe I got from Erich to address my older FT847's unidirectional CAT. Ran out of the hatch of my Subaru, armstrong rotor on a camera tripod.
I have a lot of experience on the FM birds, but due to the lack of a home station very little on the transponder birds, at least not since AO-40. A couple of questions:
For each satellite, once I dial in the correct VFO offset in SatPC (using the +/- keys), does the value stay the same pass to pass, or does it change on each pass?
When I tried to run the ISS passes (2m up and down), the 2nd VFO on the FT-847 came up "reset" in the rig display when SatPC pushed the frequencies over -- is that a rig issue or SatPC issue I need to discuss with Erich?
I had a script print out that I generated from NOVA as a back-up to SatPC32. I found in comparing it that it did not show all available passes -- if passes overlap in the NOVA scripting output, does it have a preference and drop one of them?
SO-50 was pretty much non-usable except for passes over the ocean. No surprise.
When in the right mode, I could hear AO-7 no problem , but it would switch itself off or change modes 1/3 way through the passes.
On VU-52 and FO-29, signals would start strong and then dive... I assume this is the same thing I saw from my AO-40 days on FD... as the bandpass fills with stations, the available downlink output must be shared by everyone, so the overall signals from the birds drop off significantly... is that correct?
Obviously, under "normal" conditions, it does not take much to work the linear birds... a quick search of "Amsat demo" on You Tube will demonstrate that for you -- small linear yagi's, a 2nd person on the tripod, a couple of FT817's barefoot, and no PC.
FD is, of course, a different animal. I'd like to find out, off line, what folks were running set-up remote (not home stations). You don't have to post here; please send it to me direct (my call at hotmail dot com)
In particular: 2M: TX power, antenna type and polarization, # of elements, RX pre-amp (y/n) 70CM: TX power, antenna type and polarization, # of elements, RX pre-amp (y/n) Single radio, or 2 radios? PC control of rotor? (y/n) PC control of rig? (y/n) What was your goal: Give bonus points to FD effort, or full AMSAT FD?
If folks are interested I will summarize and repost, but I will not post any individual station info.
We had great weather in New England, and a great FD outing. After making the needed QSO, I had a few more failed attempts on subsequent passes where I had trouble finding myself. Spent the rest of the weekend on 20CW, and trying to conjure up an opening on 6M.
Bill W1PA (W1BIM 6A WMA)
The 847 does not allow dual in band operation. If you think about it you would need very respectable filtering more than 100db isolation between the transmitter and receiver to be able to pull this off. In effect you are asking it to be a repeater. It can do this only when transmit and receive frequencies are not on the same band because then it only has to deal with the much smaller 3rd harmonic signal. On 6/30/2014 9:57 PM, Bill (W1PA) wrote:
When I tried to run the ISS passes (2m up and down), the 2nd VFO on the FT-847 came up "reset" in the rig display when SatPC pushed the frequencies over -- is that a rig issue or SatPC issue I need to discuss with Erich?
Floyd,
Makes perfect sense. I wonder why, when ISS is selected, SatPC32 does not configure the radio to a single VFO with a non-standard repeater offset, rather than loading 2M into both VFOs in satellite mode. Should I have taken it out of Satellite mode manually?
Something to research.
Bill
-----Original Message----- From: Floyd Rodgers Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 8:50 AM To: Bill (W1PA) ; [email protected] Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AMSAT FD 2014 debrief
The 847 does not allow dual in band operation. If you think about it you would need very respectable filtering more than 100db isolation between the transmitter and receiver to be able to pull this off. In effect you are asking it to be a repeater. It can do this only when transmit and receive frequencies are not on the same band because then it only has to deal with the much smaller 3rd harmonic signal. On 6/30/2014 9:57 PM, Bill (W1PA) wrote:
When I tried to run the ISS passes (2m up and down), the 2nd VFO on the FT-847 came up "reset" in the rig display when SatPC pushed the frequencies over -- is that a rig issue or SatPC issue I need to discuss with Erich?
Bill,
For the ISS, use the SatPC32ISS application instead of the main SatPC32. That will appropriately control your radio for the ISS.
73,
Paul, N8HM
On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Bill (W1PA) [email protected] wrote:
Floyd,
Makes perfect sense. I wonder why, when ISS is selected, SatPC32 does not configure the radio to a single VFO with a non-standard repeater offset, rather than loading 2M into both VFOs in satellite mode. Should I have taken it out of Satellite mode manually?
Something to research.
Bill
-----Original Message----- From: Floyd Rodgers Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 8:50 AM To: Bill (W1PA) ; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AMSAT FD 2014 debrief
The 847 does not allow dual in band operation. If you think about it you would need very respectable filtering more than 100db isolation between the transmitter and receiver to be able to pull this off. In effect you are asking it to be a repeater. It can do this only when transmit and receive frequencies are not on the same band because then it only has to deal with the much smaller 3rd harmonic signal. On 6/30/2014 9:57 PM, Bill (W1PA) wrote:
When I tried to run the ISS passes (2m up and down), the 2nd VFO on the FT-847 came up "reset" in the rig display when SatPC pushed the frequencies over -- is that a rig issue or SatPC issue I need to discuss with Erich?
Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Your SatPC32 installation should include a program called SatPC32ISS, a special version designed for same-band operation. Your radio should not be in satellite mode.
Dave, W8AAS
Sent from my iPad
On Jul 1, 2014, at 9:31 AM, "Bill (W1PA)" [email protected] wrote:
Floyd,
Makes perfect sense. I wonder why, when ISS is selected, SatPC32 does not configure the radio to a single VFO with a non-standard repeater offset, rather than loading 2M into both VFOs in satellite mode. Should I have taken it out of Satellite mode manually?
Something to research.
Bill
-----Original Message----- From: Floyd Rodgers Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 8:50 AM To: Bill (W1PA) ; [email protected] Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] AMSAT FD 2014 debrief
The 847 does not allow dual in band operation. If you think about it you would need very respectable filtering more than 100db isolation between the transmitter and receiver to be able to pull this off. In effect you are asking it to be a repeater. It can do this only when transmit and receive frequencies are not on the same band because then it only has to deal with the much smaller 3rd harmonic signal. On 6/30/2014 9:57 PM, Bill (W1PA) wrote:
When I tried to run the ISS passes (2m up and down), the 2nd VFO on the FT-847 came up "reset" in the rig display when SatPC pushed the frequencies over -- is that a rig issue or SatPC issue I need to discuss with Erich?
Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Thanks guys. I forget that SatPC32 is in fact a cluster of programs.
Bill W1PA
I am not familiar with SATPC32, so I cannot answer that. I think I recall discussions in the archives about using a non stantdard split not in SAT mode on the 847, but you can search the archives to confirm. We actually used an icom 821h with a 5 element beam for terrestrial qso's (without elevation) to make our two or three ISS contacts (different users and callsigns). Since those contacts do not qualify for sat contacts we actually ended up failing to get the FD sat contacts since everyone was so wound up with the ISS contacts. Oh well, something to fix for next year....
participants (4)
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Bill (W1PA) -
David Taylor -
Floyd Rodgers -
Paul Stoetzer