Hi Ray,

Thanks for the report, and I hope you don't mind that I have included part of it in this email to -bb in response to a few comments I've seen. As Ray and others have noticed, there is indeed some carrier on the downlink. It isn't what we might have designed for a voice system, but given how this came about, it's tolerable.

The tuning of the downlink is indeed more rapid than a V/U linear transponder such as FO-29. Recall that an inverting transponder uses the Doppler on the uplink to cancel out part of the Doppler on the downlink. On this configuration we do not have that benefit.

Thank you to everyone who has sent in reports, especially those who have described their stations. I'm particularly interested in reports of minimal and/or portable stations used successfully on AO-16.

73, Drew KO4MA

----- Original Message ----- From: RaySoifer@cs.com

The uplink is very sensitive indeed, and the downlink is as expected given the power level. I would add, though, that in addition to the DSB audio, there is a carrier output which helps to tune in the downlink signal. It's not really DSBSC (suppressed carrier) but more like DSBRC (reduced carrier, relative to what it would be on AM).