Hi!

The presentation and demonstration last night for the ThunderBird Amateur Radio Club in Glendale, Arizona, was a success. There was a good turnout for both, even though the demonstration started about an hour before the club meeting. An unplanned surprise also helped with the evening. One of the club members, Rick K7TEJ, used his HT and homebrew dual-band Yagi to do a demonstration on an AO-51 pass about 20 minutes before my FO-29 demonstration. This allowed the club members to see FM and SSB satellite operation before the meeting and my presentation.

On FO-29, I worked 5 stations from Tennessee and Kentucky to California, as well as Omar XE1AO in central Mexico. Thanks for the QSOs! Early in the pass, I tuned around and heard other CW activity, which reinforced the notion that more than one QSO can take place on a satellite like FO-29 at the same time. There were 15 to 20 people outside in the late-afternoon sun for the demonstrations by K7TEJ and me, not bad considering it was still around 100F/38C outside at that time.

When the club meeting started, there were probably 25 to 30 in attendance. My presentation went just over an hour after the club finshed its normal business meeting. Along with talking about the various satellites, I added a bit of discussion about the ISS and in particular the recent activity by Doug Wheelock up there. I know that for many, myself included, working the ISS can be the spark to try working other amateur satellites. I put one of the recent photos from the ISS of Doug Wheelock at the ham station in my slideshow, along with some captions to identify the equipment at the ISS ham station, to give the audience an idea of who and what is on the other end of a QSO with the ISS. I was even able to show the audience an NA1SS QSL card I had just received for a QSO with Doug on 4 September (thanks to ARRL for the very quick turnaround on my QSL request!).

The day after I worked Doug, NASA posted 3 photos of him at the ISS ham station. If you want to see them for yourself, they can be found at:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-24/html/iss024e01338...

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-24/html/iss024e01338...

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-24/html/iss024e01339...

I used the photo in the third link in my slideshow. It was nice to see these on the NASA photo archive for this expedition, and especially nice to see the caption identify the radio as a "ham radio system" and not just a "communications system" as was done on similar photos from past ISS expeditions.

Thanks to the ThunderBird Amateur Radio Club for inviting me out to another meeting for a presentation and demonstration. This was the fourth time I have done this at their meetings since 2007, in addition to having an AMSAT table at their January hamfests over the past few years. The club's program chairman, Israel AD7ND (also an AMSAT member), is already asking me to make another presentation to the club a year from now. :-) And a thank-you to Rick K7TEJ for adding the FM satellite demonstration to the evening.

73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/