[amsat-bb] AO-40 S1 Transponder Premiere!

[Kc2hax@xxxxxxx]

Hi Folks,
It was great AO-40 night yesterday. As you all may know by now S1 Tx testing 
at orbit 350 MA 44-80 was very succesful!!!!!!!!!!!
The "show" started with lots of QSOs on S2 before the opening ceremony when 
the S2 MB beacon was announcing the coming test and the new transponder 
schedule.
>From MA 44 onwards, the engineering beacon at 2400.6 was consistently 
received here at KC2HAX 36dB!!! over the noise level even with squint angles 
of 11 degrees at the end of the testing period. 
Great signal indeed!!!!
The S2 transponder PA with 38 W PEP is sligthly less powerful than the 50 W 
S2, however the extra gain of the antenna makes a huge difference.
It was a very nice nigth, early morning for the European stations. Many great 
signals all over the passband, with Stacey, W4SM being interviewed live via 
AO-40 and answering a lot of questions (TNX Stacey for all the hard work and 
congratulations to all the team!!!).

I made some recordings of my own downlink, so you can have a taste of the 
quality of the S2 signals, the files are available at:

http://members.aol.com/kc2hax/myhomepage/audio

files s1tst_en.wav and s1tst_sp.wav are signals recorded yesterday during the 
S1 sked.
s2tst_sp.wav was recorded back in May at AO-40 apogee (60k range)
I used the same Rx/Tx equipment for all recordings (another big difference is 
the Murata filter upgrade for the TSI converter between May and yesterday).

s1 tests:
Myers BBQ dish
TSI (w /Murata) converter
FT 847
Uplink 20 Watts

s2 tests:
Myers BBQ dish
TSI stock converter
FT 847
Uplink 40 Watts

For station details check my "under construction" website at 
http://hometown.aol.com/kc2hax/ea4le.htm

73 

antonio

Antonio Fernandez, M.D. KC2HAX/EA4LE
Belle Mead, NJ. FN20qk




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