[amsat-bb] ao51 mode S tip

[David Giles <vk5dg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,
Here's a tip that made my mode S reception easier.
Yesterday was my first attempt on mode V/S with my BBQ grill mounted 
on the Az El rotators.  Previous attempts (all successful) had the 
antenna on a camera tri-pod - manual tracking and tuning.  The good 
thing about V/S is I only have to worry about the downlink, the 
uplink stays fixed.
Well, the tracking worked, confirming my antennas are pointing in the 
right direction.  Signals very loud and QSB quite manageable.

Now here's the tip.  Downlink is a pacific monolithic downconverter 
with inbuilt dipole and output around 450.2MHz into a PCR-1000.
Just for an experiment I turned on the PCR-1000s AFC and lo and behold 
it tracked the doppler without missing a beat.  Very impressed.
For the record, the uplink was <5W into a W4RNL moxon rectangle array.

Now I won't have to worry about the downlink when I (eventually) get 
to try mode L/S.

73 de David VK5DG
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