From announcements on http://navassadx.com/, it looks like K1N might be on

the air (on HF at least) sometime this evening. This would be a good time to update everyone on the planned satellite operations.

I spoke with Gregg, W6IZT last Tuesday morning as he was packing for his departure the following day. Gregg will be the satellite op, although others may also participate. Gregg will be operating half-duplex with a Yaesu FT-817 (provided by AMSAT) and an Arrow antenna. Gregg has pass prediction information for FO-29 and SO-50, for all passes that are 20 degrees or higher at the island (thanks to John K8YSE for preparing those). While the focus will be on FO-29, it is possible they may try SO-50 as well. Gregg did mention satellite operations are more likely in the second half of the expedition as opposed to the first half.

The radio is programmed with 5 split-band memory channels for SO-50, and has two high quality LMR-240UF jumpers to connect directly to the Arrow via the front and back antenna ports. Additionally, the VFOs are programmed for FO-29 operation with a fixed uplink of 145.980, for a downlink at 435.813 to 435.827 depending on Doppler. This is the important part: Gregg will be tuning his receive for replies, and may not be listening directly on his own downlink. Calling while he is transmitting will not work since he is half-duplex. This is much the same way other rovers such as KL7R and UT1FG operate. This particular frequency scheme was chosen to reduce QRM (both given and received) and allow a quick tune to the beacon for antenna pointing when there are not many callers.

Gregg has my email and cell phone number, and I have asked him to alert me if possible, no matter the hour, when they decide to get on FO-29, which I will pass along to the list and the AMSAT twitter feed immediately.

The team is still in need of financial help for the expedition. Please consider helping them out at http://69.89.25.185/~trexsoft/t-rexsoftware.com/k1n/donate.htm

Good Luck and 73,

Drew KO4MA

AMSAT-NA VP Operations