Seriously

[KF7MYK]

Here is one for ya

Why dont people use FM on the SSB sats when there are plenty of chanels and they are pretty damn quiet anyway???

Seems like a "band plan" to keep usage down.

 

[Qwazyone]

Why dont people use FM on the SSB sats when there are plenty of chanels and they are pretty damn quiet anyway???

Seems like a "band plan" to keep usage down.

It actually has to do with the power consumption involved in repeating the 100% duty cycle of a FM signal, SSB and CW are usually less than 50% duty cycle. VO-52 is one of the younger linear sats and its about 6 years old now. You've probably read some of Mark Hammond's post on the amsat board about AO-51, not being able to use the 2.4GHz downlink because of battery condition and eclipses and they didn't run in dual repeater mode very long. AO-51 is only a year older than VO-52.