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www.southgatearc.org
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ISS Cross Band Repeater – A Big SuccessHaving the ISS repeater on for Field Day was a big success ! On the evening of June 22 I was awaiting the repeater to be switched on. The first pass APRS was still active. Second pass there were no downlink signals at all, so I knew someone up there was working on the D700 - tension further growing. And YES ! The third pass (~21:30 UTC) the repeater was on, working great, and both myself and Ib, OZ1MY made a QSO with Jeff Williams. In the days after, many stations were able to make contacts, and to my surprise there was no chaos this time on the passes over Europe. Very polite traffic, and all stations waiting for the others to finish their QSO's. Lot of fun ! Portable access was doable too: with my Kenwood THD7 (2W) and only a 7 elements handheld beam I made on June 24 a QSO. Compared to AO51 the D700 in ISS is much more sensitive to Doppler correction, but with 3 memory channels it worked fine. The audio over-modulation is still for many stations an issue to handle, but it seems most of us can listen full-duplex, as after one day this was under control. Is there a setting in the D700 that we could change for this? Or is the crew mic level setting coupled the audio level of the uplink receiver (in which case we should not change anything as the crew's audio is excellent via the repeater)? Many thanks on behalf of all the stations that had a great weekend! Henk, PA3GUO
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