The June 2004 QST cover photo shows a few of us holding a piece of rabbit fence bent into a parabola about 2' wide by 1' high with the HT held at the focal point. It makes a great gain antenna and is trivial to build. The HT's rubber duck is at the focal point so there is no coax.

This is fine for voice satellites, but not so practical for data satelites which need a laptop and TNC and cables.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.qrz.com/h/kb9sxh/cover_shot_QST_bmp.jpg

Bob

-----Original Message----- From: AMSAT-BB [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Zach Metzinger Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 2:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Falconsat-3 and APRS HT's?

On 10/03/17 07:07, Roy Dean wrote:

Greg,

You are going to have a very hard time copying Falconsat with omni/whip antenna's. Yes, it's a strong downlink, but "strong" for amateur satellites is misleading... It's nowhere near as strong as the ISS voice radio, for example, which is easily picked up on my scanner duckie.

It's supposed to be over one watt, but I can pick up AO-85 with a stronger signal, if that gives you any idea. Also, Falconsat has some really serious polarity fade, so there's another issue. I can go from roughly S7 to 'nuttin by rotating my arrow 10°.

While polarization is still an issue, you might try a square-corner reflector as a starter antenna:

http://www.qsl.net/ve3rgw/corner.html

Of course, you'll want to upgrade it with a rotator to track the satellite, but aiming it by hand should work fine. Keep the coax loss low, or, for both NF improvement and to make up for coax loss, add a LNA right at the antenna.

If you want some historical background on this type of antenna, take a look at this oldie:

http://www.arrl.org/files/file/History/History%20of%20QST%20Volume%201%20-%2...

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