Re: [amsat-bb] Doing the best they can.

[Emily Clarke <w0eec@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:05 PM 5/4/2004 +0200, john hackett wrote:
>A lot of amateur satellite operators would like to have fully automated 
>stations but many of them,
>particularly among the newly established families, homebuilders and 
>penionists etc.....often simply can't afford the extra investment.

This was certainly a consideration when I started - of all the things to 
spend money on (antennas, radio, preamps and eventual dish and 
downconverter) automatic tuning (and rotation) seemed to be a low 
priority.  Now it's priority has changed to an academic exercise so I can 
teach others about it.

It also occurred to me last year on field day that if I didn't know how to 
manually tune the radio I was going to need to have a computer, power etc. 
For a 3A station running QRP on battery power this was a big problem 
considering the 910H receive section still draws considerably more power 
than the receiver sections the HF guys have with their Elecraft K1s and 
817s. So learning to tune manually (and rotate manually) insured I could 
operate in true field-battery conditions with a minimal amount of equipment.

73,

Emily

---------------------------------
W0EEC - CM87tm
AMSAT Area Coordinator - San Francisco Bay Area
http://www.projectoscar.net    http://www.PlanetEmily.com 
http://www.experthams.net/ao7

Help Launch Echo - http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/echo/index.html
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