So ... I had just finished working Rick, WA4NVM, on AO-16 in "bent pipe" mode at 23:03 UTC when I heard Mike, WB9L. I chased the Doppler a bit and had called him a couple times when he finally answered and we made the contact at 23:04:39 UTC. AO-16 was at 4.1 degrees elevation for me, and my signal (according to Orbitron) travelled 2,885.516 km to the satellite - 5 watts from a Yaesu VX-7R HT going into an omnidirectional eFactor dual-band antenna. I was excited because Mike lives in Indiana, my 7th state worked on AO-16. Then I got an email from Mike, and from Dave, KB1PVH, in Massachusetts, and I realized what happened. As AO-16 was between 4 and 4.5 degrees elevation far to the west of me (269 degrees azimuth), AO-51 was at roughly 19.5 degrees to my northeast (45 degrees azimuth) using the same FM uplink as AO-16, on 145.920. So WB9L and I made a cross-band, cross-mode, cross-satellite contact! I'm sure it's not a first, but it's a first for me - and just about the coolest QSO-in-orbit I've had to date.

73 to all,

Tim - N3TL AMSAT Member No. 36820 Athens, Ga. - EM84ha