That makes activating a rare grid pretty easy.
As noted above, you can get on satellites with a handy talkie and a hand-held antenna. That’s where grid expeditions come into play. There are 488 grids in the continental United States and it’s very, very difficult to collect them all. Even so, working grids in the USA can be a great deal of fun. Some of my best DX from here in North Texas has been Alaska, Azores, Hawaii, and Northern Ireland. For the maximum distance you’ll be at one edge of the coverage pattern and the DX station at the other end. With satellites you will only hear stations that are in the footprint of the satellite.
#MACDOPPLER PRO PORTABLE#
Portable station set up from the back of my SUV in grid DM95 using IC-9700 and MacDoppler.
#MACDOPPLER PRO SOFTWARE#
You can also interface the rotator system to your computer and let the software point the antennas.
Even better, you can use a rotator system that controls both azimuth and elevation. Simple Yagis for 2 meters and 70 cm can be controlled by a small television rotator for azimuth and the antennas can be tilted upward around 15 degrees to cover the elevation of most satellite passes. You can also add computer control of the transceiver’s uplink and downlink frequency.Īnother improvement is to use higher gain antennas that track the satellite’s azimuth (direction around the compass) and even elevation.
#MACDOPPLER PRO FULL#
This rig is all set for satellite operation including receiving the downlink signal at the same time you’re transmitting - full duplex. That could include adding a VHF/UHF satellite transceiver such as the Icom IC-9700. All that just takes some practice to get it right.Īnd, of course, you can always improve your station. It also takes a bit of skill to determine satellite orbits and where to point your antenna at the right time. It does require a bit of skill, acquired by getting on the air, to line up the transmit and receive frequencies to hear yourself on the satellite, and to track the station on the other side of the QSO. There are lots of possibilities for transmitting and receiving. Plus, a handy talkie can be used as the uplink transmitter and another one can be used for the downlink receiver. A simple hand-held Yagi or log-periodic antenna works very well. Satellite operation, for all its out-of-this-world implications, doesn’t really require all that much in the way of equipment. It sounds a bit complicated, but once you’re got the process down it becomes second nature. This will help you determine when and where to point your antenna to connect with the satellite. That list will include dates and times for AOS, acquisition of satellite, the azimuth of the satellite, the maximum elevation, and the LOS, loss of satellite. You enter your location either from your grid square or latitude/longitude, select the satellite, and it will provide a listing of the satellite passes.
AMSAT (The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) has an online calculator ( ). To find the times that satellites will be overhead you can use a smart phone app, computer program, or go online. In fact, their visibility is typically around 10 minutes from the time the satellite appears above the horizon, travels across the sky, and disappears beneath the opposite horizon. You still have one band for uplink and another band for the downlink.Īs you may have guessed, you cannot see these satellites at all times. Instead they have a linear bandwidth that allows several stations in QSOs at the same time. These satellites are not limited by a single channel. The SSB/CW satellites currently in operation include XW-2A, XW-2B, XW-2F, CAS-4A, and CAS-4B. This is called full duplex versus half duplex when you can only hear when you’re not transmitting. It also means that you can listen on 2 meters and hear your own transmitted signal repeated through the satellite. That means that your transmitter needs to be on 70 cm and receiver on 2 m. These three satellites have a 70 cm uplink frequency and 2 m downlink frequency. You can think of them as repeaters traveling at 17,500 miles per hour at roughly 300 miles above the earth. They use a single uplink channel and downlink channel. The FM satellites currently include AO-85, AO-91, and AO-92. There are two primary types of satellites: FM and SSB/CW satellites. From piggy-back riding on other satellite launches to getting onto the International Space Station and tossed out the window, so to speak, there are many ways of getting into orbit. While it’s no small matter to build and launch a satellite, it is becoming much more common. There are currently a number of amateur radio satellites on the air. If you haven’t tried satellite operations, I heartily encourage you to check out this amazing yet easily accessed segment of our amateur radio hobby.
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