I was on L/S tonight, albeit in an unusual fashion. My S dish is sitting in the garage with a broken feed, so I was restricted to listening on my Transystem and corner reflector from the front yard. I use an F6A HT to receive with, powered by a lead acid 2Ah battery stuck in my back pocket.

I _really_ wanted to make a QSO, but the mike cord doesn't reach from the shack to the yard! I remembered my Icom 910H has a VOX feature. Hmmmm. It's hooked up to a PC running SatPC32 and hooked to a 24 element 1.2 yagi at 25 feet. I made up a new pair for the doppler file in SatPC32 that listened on a UHF simplex frequency, and transmitted on the L band uplink after doppler correction. I turned VOX on and laid the mike on the top of the rig near the speaker. Made a best guess at volume control, kerchunked it a few times and out to the yard I went about 2 minutes before AOS. I took my D7A out with me tuned to the simplex frequency I'd picked and started listening with the Transystem and the F6A. I heard Alan WA4SCA almost immediately. Doing my best Apollo inspired VOX-opening "ahhhh...KO4MA"... I'll be a monkey's uncle it worked! Alan and I had a nice chat until my speaker plug came out partway and the F6A thought I was trying to program it. I restablished the downlink after a minute or three and listened to Alan and N8BBQ chat until LOS.

Anyways...just a note describing how things happen around the shack here at KO4MA sometimes ;-)

73, Drew KO4MA