Satgen 209 Doppler Part 5, Transmitting and Receiving by GM4IHJ 27Mar 93 This msg has BID SGEN209 Please use that BID if you retransmit this msg. Using a satellite for two way communication, transmitting to it , and , receiving from it, produces two separate doppler shifts on the signal. Fisrtly your uplink transmission is doppler shifted as it enters the satellite receiver . Then when the satellite transponds and retransmits the signal back to you , it gets another dose of doppler shift before entering your receiver. In a typical situation :- You tx up to the sat at 435 MHz It is received at 435.0093 MHz The sat mixer downconverts it additively to 145 MHz using 290 MHz local osc. So the sat transmits 435.0093 - 290 = 145.0093 MHz to you You receive this with added downlink doppler as 145.0093 + 0.0031 MHz so you end up with +12.4 kHz approaching doppler and then have -12.4 kHz of receding doppler by the end of the pass. A total doppler shift of 24.8 kHz, with a tuning rate of about 8 kHz/min in the middle of the pass . A totally impossible situation to handle with manual tuning. Amsat builders were aware of this difficulty from the start. So they adopted a simple correction. Instead of using additive mixing in the sat receiver they used subtractive mixing, substituting a 580 MHz local oscillator for the 290 MHz local oscillator . Effectively subtracting downlink doppler from uplink doppler. 435 up received in sat as 435.0093 . Mixed with 580 Mhz becomes 144.9907 which downlinked to you becomes 144.9907 + 0.0031 = 144.9938 . An apparent shift of only 6.2 kHz instead of 12.4 kHz . Resulting in an overall shift going from horizon to horizon of only 12.4 kHz instead of 24.8 kHz. With a consequent very useful halving of the tuning rate necessary to stay on tune in the overhead portion of the pass. In practice the above example refers only to your reception of your own uplink. Any distant station you communicate with has a different relative velocity to the satellite and therefore receives a different doppler shift. But if you start calling directly on his frequency and TUNE YOUR TRANSMITTER TO REMAIN ON THE SAME PLACE ON YOUR RECEIVER TUNING, you should get useful communication. Be warned however that this type of operation has two important features. Firstly if you use SSB, you must uplink LSB in order to downlink USB, because subtractive mixing inverts the sidebands of your signal. Secondly some transceivers cannot "Tune whilst transmitting" - they only tune when your Tx is off , so tuning to follow doppler is difficult if you cannot tune whilst actually sending and listening to your returning downlink signal. Please ensure you get my callsign right if you have any queries to send to me. The GBR and EI BBS ops are very good at guessing who you really mean , but 3 wrong callsigns in each of the last 2 weeks , tests their kindness to the limit ,Tnx . 73 de GM4IHJ @ GB7SAN