just me chiming in again. I have kocmoc award number 51-RS and can find no dash number typed on mine, but then I have it matted (poorly ) in a frame which might have cut it off a bit. Mine is dated Sept 12 1998. I also have the ZRO award dated January 1995, only ever got down to level 4 on mode B, was working on further shack enhancements when I either got married or the satellite died, or maybe a bit of both. Very proud of this award, even if my level is somewhat trifling compared to level 8 My prized possession is a Special Event QSL from W5RRR for the Apollo 11th 25th Anniversary on July 19-22, 1994. I worked them the last pass over the US, last couple hours of the pass, and I was the last station to work them before the satellite ( AO-21 )switched modes to transmit wefax images. I was working it portable, with a Bearcat scanner with preamp for reception, a Kenwood TH-78 HT driving the gutted final from a Motorola UHF Micor and a 12 element yagi on a camera tripod for the uplink. How many others worked this Special Event Station, or remember the different modes of AO-21? Looking at the dust covered walls here I see I was extremely active in sats in the mid to late 1990s; very little since. Some of that I can blame on getting married about that time. Some I cannot. It's easy to sigh and wish for the "good old days" but I think that memory is always sweeter and if we looked more closely the good old days weren't always so good.

I for one would not want to go back to manual tracking and doppler correction like I had back then .. I finally upgraded to an AEA ST-1 and The Station Program by VP9MU some time around 1997 if I remember. The availability of cheap solid state power FETS is pretty darn cool too.. a single FET 1200 watt amplifier for two meters really tickles me pink.. working on one now for my EME station.. So maybe we'll look back on THESE as the good old days.

I have some very well thumbed issues of Orbits magazine, the forerunner to AMSAT Journal from when I first got licensed in 1981. I see they were pretty excited to be building AO-10 back then, and commemorating the third launch anniversary of Oscar-8. Very cool stuff indeed.

73 all,

Bob W1ICW