Hi Folks,

Easy said, easy done--with undesirable results....increasing the power much from where we are right now would likely cause the batteries to drop low enough to shut the bird OFF in an orbit or two. Not quite the outcome you had in mind, I suspect...

We are where we are. It's all about power budget and managing what power we have, in the circumstances we have. That is, we are in full sunlight. But that doesn't mean we can increase the power on 435.300. In fact, we've had to reduce it. There are limitations due to deteriorating batteries, RFI effects (receiver desense) when the TX power is high, battery temperatures, sun angle, nutation, and the list goes on and on. It's a balancing act, and right now the bird is pretty well balanced. The trade off is that we're down a couple hundred mW on the 435.300 transmitter. It's currently running about 450 mW. It might go up a little bit before the end of the current full illumination period (which ends Jan 1st or so), but time will tell. We'll continue to nudge it up as the illumination angles improve. But it might get worse before the illumination period is over...

I'm attending the AMSAT Symposium in October. I'll be happy to sit around and try to explain in person and in greater detail all that we're trying to accomplish and work around, but it's honestly more than I have time to type out....so come to the symposium and hear it first hand :)

It's always a good time to work on improving the receiver sensitivities of our stations :)

In the words of a famous Scotsman--"We're givin' 'er all she's got, Captain!"

73,

Mark N8MH

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Roger Kolakowski Rogerkola@aol.com wrote:

WOW! Please?

Roger  WA1KAT

On 9/9/2010 10:01 AM, wa4hfn@comcast.net wrote:

...

Whats up with AO51  I can just tell that it is there .Little to no signal ?

up the output some

WA4HFN Damon _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb

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Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb