I think that crazy tuning pattern boils down to this: If the station you hear is not using doppler they will appear to be going up the band. Then a station that is using doppler control may appear stationary or moving up the band depending upon how fast your doppler AND their doppler are updating. More frequent updates are better and eliminate a bunch of tuning. I think the default is around 100 hz. I use 20 hz.

For your own signal, I'm assuming that your are hearing yourself. I often have to tune either the uplink or the downlink as much as 1500 Hz to match the uplink to the downlink. You are right on the LSB up and the USB down. Don't give up, you are almost there. Don't worry about the other stations. Pick a open spot and tune yourself first using the CAT Tuning window. I believe I usually have to tune the Uplink UP. Once you do it the first time, you'll get the hand of it.

Also, sometimes when I first select an SSB bird, the Downlink and Uplink frequencies will be a ways off from the frequencies shown in the CAT Tuning window. If this happens, go to the up and down buttons just to the right of the Downlink and Uplink display, click the 20 up and then the 20 down. The Downlink and Uplink should jump to the proper frequency. This may have been caused by my CAT delay not being high enough, but I haven't observed whether changing that fixed it.

John N7JK

From: asd asd sunsetdialpad@yahoo.com Subject: [amsat-bb] VO52 questions....

I have been trying for a week to get into the VO52 satellite and have some questions... I can hear people talking and have to constantly manually tune them in in crazy patterns. One persons doppler will go up and another will go down. It is like I am chasing people that are constantly changing their transmit frequency and does not fit a normal doppler change. Another thing is that I cannot tune myself in at all. It is like I am transmitting in the wrong sideband. I am recieving the downlink in USB and it is my understanding that the uplink is supposed to be LSB. The program I am using is SatPC32 that CAT tunes an IC910H into a M2 2MCP14 - M2436CP30 both with right hand polarization. Just trying to get away from the FM Birds and try some new ones and looking for some help to figure out what I may be overlooking or doing wrong.

Thanks...