Hey everyone,

I've never heard AO-7 so busy.

I'm sure she has been - "in the old days," back in the 1970s when she was still new to orbit. But tonight on the pass that reached the W4G Field Day site about 0026 UTC, I heard more stations on AO-7 than I've heard in the two years I've been working the satellites - and I stayed in the CW portion of the passband! If CW was that busy, I suspect the SSB going on above 145.950 was even busier. Some may disagree (because I'm confident I'm not the only one who heard the "FMing"), but I was happy to hear the Grand Old Girl get such a workout.

I promised the clubs from Athens, Ga., and Commerce, Ga. - who do a combined Field Day effort using the 1x1 call W4G - that I'd try to get them the 100-point satellite bonus. In 2009, I worked most of the Saturday and Sunday-morning FD passes as the W4G satellite station, and we did ok. For a number of reasons this year, I didn't commit to more than the time necessary to get them the bonus.

I took a different tack with the station setup this year, too, because I wanted to show the folks how little gear is necessary to effectively work the satellites - even the highest-orbiting, oldest one in the amateur fleet. I used an FT-817ND as the transmit radio, and a Yaesu VR-500 handheld all-mode receiver as the receive radio. I connected both to my Elk antenna with a Diamond diplexer. In addition to hand-holding the Elk and manually tracking AO-7, I tuned for Doppler manually and used a straight key for CW. There was a lot going on during the pass, for sure.

My goal was to show those folks that effective satellite communications doesn't require significant expense or so much equipment that portable operation is problematic at best. If you can connect an all-mode VHF/UHF receiver and an all-mode QRP rig that also covers VHF/UHF to an Elk or an Arrow handheld antenna, you only need to add headphones (to avoid feedback during full-duplex operation) and a key or microphone to work any of the FM or linear satellites. I dare say that if all the stations I heard on AO-7 tonight had been running no more than 5 watts into their antennas, the FMing probably wouldn't have been nearly so bad.

Thanks from W4G to W5MSQ, N9AMW and W8DXA for the calls. I had a splitter cable from the headphone jack on the VR-500 to two sets of headphones, so several people got to listen to portions of the pass on the second set of headphones. It was fun seeing the looks on their faces as they heard CW arriving from orbit!

Best of luck to everyone this Field Day!

73 and God Bless,

Tim - N3TL

Athens, Ga. - EM84ha