Hi!

Patrick, WD9EWK, and I had a pretty cool CW contact on AO-7 this evening.

As far as I know (I'm confident Patrick will correct me if this is inaccurate), both of us were on full battery power and using handheld Elk antennas. My station included one FT-817ND for transmit (at 5 watts out) and another for receive, and each was running on its internal battery pack. I pulled the plug on my Acer netbook and let it do the Doppler tuning on its internal battery pack. I connected both radios to the Elk with a Diamond duplexer, and used the straight key I picked up for Straight Key Night this year.

You're right, Tim. I was using my two FT-817NDs on battery power, 5W transmit power into my Elk Antennas handheld log periodic. The antenna was connected to the radios through a W6ZQ-modified MFJ duplexer, almost identical to your Diamond duplexer. Ron - it works great! Instead of a straight key, I had a Palm Radio Mini-Paddle on its magnetic base sitting on top of my transmit radio.

I'm currently northeast of Phoenix, staying in grid DM43iu for the weekend. There are mountains around here, but they did not bother AO-7 during this pass. I worked VO-52 this morning and AO-27 in the afternoon, before it was time for AO-7.

Patrick was a solid 579 when he called me, and he worked AJ9K after our contact. And unlike me, I believe he is still manually tuning for Doppler.

Yes, still tuning by hand, and trying to conform to the One True Rule in tuning the higher of the two frequencies whenever possible. I still want to get computer control for the radios working via SatPC32, but I did not want to miss a chance to try AO-7 in mode B tonight.

I believe these are Patrick's first contacts on Grand Old AO-7. Congratulations to him. Here's to many more contacts with our "flea power" portable stations.

These were my first two QSOs on AO-7. I tried AO-7 last summer, using my dual-band Yagi instead of the log periodic, and could only hear myself in CW on passes where AO-7 was above 50 degrees or so elevation. When AO-7 was around 10-15 degrees elevation tonight, I could hear CW when my log periodic was leaning against the side of my truck! And no preamp!!

Thanks to Tim and Dan AJ9K for my first two AO-7 QSOs, and my apologies for what were probably quick QSOs on my end. I was hoping to get them in before the satellite went away from me, and not do too bad on the CW. SSB will probably need higher passes for my 5W portable station, and possibly a preamp, but I can deal with CW. :-)

73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK - currently in Tonto Basin AZ http://www.wd9ewk.net/