I'm sorta a newbie at this, altho I did work the early Oscars and RS birds. I have decieded I wanted to work the sats again only I forgot most of what I knew. hi Last nite I listened to the 2M downlink for VO-52 and I'm hooked. I tried sending dits on its uplink but was very weak, when I switched to SSB I could not hear myself. Here is what I was using for the downlink my FT-857D into my 9 el M2 yagi at 25ft, for the uplink a FT-817 into a homebrew 5 el 435 yagi on a tripod right next to the desk. Tonite I'm going to reverse it and use my FT-857D for the uplink.

I prefer CW but so far have not heard any. I'm not even sure what part of the band CW is used. Could someone give me a example I want to be on the middle of the CW band. Where do I set the Tx, and then the Rx. If I had some examples I could figure it out but right now I'm clueless.

Got to rearrange my station to get it ready for later tonite. I will probably be a pest constantly asking questions till it all comes back to me. How rare is South Dakota on the birds?