+ The View from Flagler County
Add a satellite capability to your EmComm arsenal. If terrestrial
platforms are out, a satellite may be all you have left. Operating
through low earth orbiting satellites also improves operating skill:
it's like driving your car with the road moving. You must tune your
uplink and downlink frequencies to compensate for a fast Doppler
****ft, as you send and receive your CW or SSB signal. It's not easy at
first; but like anything, the more you practice, the better you get.
Try the FM repeater bird AO-51 first, with an uplink of 145.90 MHz,
and a downlink of 435.225 MHz. No fancy tracking software is
necessary: Use AMSAT's pass predictor at:
<http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/predict/>.
You won't be satisfied for long on AO-51. Move up to VO-52 for real
operating on a wide transponder pass band: the uplink is 435.220 MHz
to 435.280 MHz and the downlink is 145.870 to 145.930 MHz. Both SSB
and CW work just fine. Signals are good without preamplifiers, nor
even rotating beam antennas. Believe it or not, I use a cheap, simple
fixed 2-meter/70 cm beam <http://www.arrowantennas.com>
pointed
skyward at a 45 degree angle. Prior to the pass, I check the AMSAT
predictor for the access times and the highest elevation azimuth, and
walk out to the backyard and hand turn the mast accordingly. I usually
get a ten-minute window and decent signals to work a few CW contacts,
including a recent one with Honduras. For upgrades, I am planning to
add a separate 70 cm beam to reduce a bit of de-sense on voice
operation, and a used/rebuilt Alliance U-110 rotator from
<http://www.rotorservice.com>.
It's not rocket science (pun intended): if I can do it, anybody can do
it. Satellites may be all you have in a doomsday scenario, and are
great ways to improve your operating skill. (And frankly, they are a
blast of fun to play with!)
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Being that I am in the south east, I am wondering if I can talk DX on
AO-51. I have never tried satellite yet.
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