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www.southgatearc.org
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Try the Easy-SatsDid Santa bring you some new ham gear over the holidays? Are you counting the hours until domestic HF becomes 'code free'? We have something to recommend in this new year. Another mode of operation that everyone can use with their existing equipment, be it a large HF station, or that shiny new handheld transceiver. We're talking about satellite operation. Amateur Radio Newsline's Bruce Tennant, K6PZW, takes a close look at ham-sats and how to operate them: Many people have the notion that working repeaters on satellites is too much trouble. You probably have visions of high tech roof beam antennas on rotors and complicated tracking software to find out when and where these birds fly. Well, neither is necessary on the simplest satellites. Many use FM and are easy to use. Take for example SO-50, also known as Oscar-50. It transmits on UHF, 436.8 MHz and you transmit to it on VHF, 145.85 MHz FM. So, you use your HT and put those frequencies in. That's pretty much it for equipment. Even if your HT is 2-meters only, you could use a scanner for the downlink. And how do you find out when SO-50 is coming your way? Look at www.amsat.org . There you'll find a simple pass calculator. You put in your longitude and latitude and they give you the times to go outside and listen. Of course, a little better antenna helps a lot. The amsat.org
website has some great articles on this, too. You can build your own
little handheld beam, or let them direct you to one of the companies that
make small, inexpensive HT antennas for satellite use. Well, thousand mile contacts are normal with satellite work, and with a little practice, you'll soon be working the birds and having fun with this mode of operation. Check out the AMSAT website for beginner's
tips, satellite passes and all sorts of other useful information. Bruce Tennant, K6PZW
Source: Amateur Radio Newsline
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