[amsat-bb] so35

["Bruce Paige" <kk5do@xxxxxxxxx>]

since today was the first pass of so-35 over the u.s. where the transponder 
was turned to mode b. i think i might have had the first qso on it. it was an 
ascending pass so south texas was one of the first to get the bird. but the 
reason i say this is that at 1838, we had telemetry from the bird. i tried to 
uplink thinking it might go over the telemetry if the receiver had been turned 
on. it did not work and i was starting to send email to cliff, k7rr. about a 
minute or so later at 1839, the telemetry stopped and i heard george, n4zq. i 
called him and made a contact. then i worked roger, k4rs. so the three of us 
were the first to make mode b contacts over the u.s.

darn...i didn't have the recorder working at the beginning and then someone 
said 'is anyone recording this' and i grabbed the tape player and started it.

maybe we can get the satellite activated on the weekends for starters. that 
certainly would help to ease the burden on ao-27. 

-------below is my soap box. if it offends anyone...sorry...just the facts----------
i would like to comment on two things. 

first is the over use of power on this first pass. i started with 50 watts. then 
n4zq and myself dropped down to 5 watts and we sounded just as good. i 
found later that i could not get into the bird because i was only transmitting 
at 5 watts. why....well, let's leave this one alone, chomp, chomp, enough 
said.

the second thing i would like to comment on is towards the end of the pass, 
someone was calling 'test 1, 2, 3, test 1, 2, 3' several times. this is a very 
bad operating practice. why...because he could not hear the downlink. if he 
did, he would have heard himself and would not have repeated it several 
times. this only added to the qrm on the already overcrowded frequency. 
what should he have done.... first listened to the bird. if he couldn't hear it, 
keep tuning until you can. never ever transmit unless you can hear the 
satellite. if you can't hear it, what good will it be to transmit? you won't hear 
anyone that comes back to you. once you hear the satellite, then you can 
tune your transmit and it shouldn't take you more than a second or two to 
line it up. what else did he do wrong? he didn't id.
------end of my soap box-----

73...bruce



============================================================================
Bruce Paige, KK5DO                         Internet: kk5do@amsat.org
Houston, Texas                                   or: kk5do@hal-pc.org
AMSAT Area Coordinator                      
ARRL Awards Manager (WAS, 5BWAS, VUCC), VE                     
Houston AMSAT Net - Tuesday, 8PM CDT on GE-1 (W1), T12, 5.7MHz at 103 deg
Also affiliated repeaters in North America. Also available on Real Audio at
http://www.amsatnet.com                Visit SHOT http://www.clarc.org/shot
Hear the latest satellite news on the ARRL Audio News   http://www.arrl.org
----
Via the amsat-bb mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org