Re: [amsat-bb] Portable Fuji Bird Operation

[Lee810@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 1/29/00 2:38:16 PM Mountain Standard Time, 
solitsky@acsu.buffalo.edu writes:

> Is anyone successfully operating FO-20 completely portable?  I just picked
>  up an IC-402 and put the satellite sub-band crystal in it and heard the 
bird
>  well without a preamp and just my arrow antenna.  I am wondering if anyone
>  has tried getting into the bird with the companion IC-202 or another 
battery
>  powered SSB rig?

Funny you should ask... I just got on the FO birds for the first time last 
week using my Arrow mounted on a camera tripod inside the house.  I had tried 
prior to that, but holding the arrow and adjusting for Doppler on an 
inverting transponder is just a little too much for me.  Using the tripod 
also allowed me to get it far enough away from me that I could use the full 
50 watts on the uplink although the first few contacts were made with an 
externally mounted a J-pole for the uplink.  I have been using a $15 
Vectronics kit preamp for the downlink and find it helps a lot, at least 
indoors.    

I also worked a few stations the other night with this setup on AO10.  Now 
that was a bit of a challenge with no preamp on the 2-meter side but the bird 
was only at 8,000 km at the time.  Before I was able to do it, I had to go 
around the house shutting off all the birdie-producing stuff including my 
computers.  Then I had to run on the portable computer every once in a while 
to figure out which way to point the antenna. 

Lee Devlin, KØLEE  (K0LEE)
Greeley, CO
http://members.aol.com/lee810/ham.html
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