I wrote this for the local SNARS news letter, pretty funny reading it six months later!!!
The Trials and Tribulations of Satellite Communication
Shortly after obtaining my Ham Radio License my brother KD7QDG introduced me to the idea of talking on Satellites. At first I was not real sure what the heck he was talking about, however the fact that he had been a Ham since 02’ and his background with IT and Communications, I trusted him. The idea sounded a lot more interesting and challenging than hitting the local or even distant repeaters. He had not made a contact yet so that interested me even more, plus anything that mixes computers and radios together, I am all for it!
Having all the right equipment (we’ll get into that later) we get everything set up and not knowing what the heck I am doing I set out on this new adventure with great enthusiasm. James shows me the Amsat page with the satellite coming towards us, we set the frequencies for receive and transmit, we got the antennas set up in the driveway, and we hear nothing. Is the thing on? Are the frequencies good? How does this work? Now keep in mind there is no operating manual for this (which is what this is all about) and we were pretty frustrated. I had a LOT of questions and no answers. Sure Amsat has a lot of information but to the beginner it really was not that helpful.
I go home more intrigued than ever, I start a file on all these sats, only the ones that you can talk on, not really interested in just receiving telemetry, I want to be heard, this isn’t data entry here, I want to communicate right? So I really am not finding much other than what Amsat has and all the other stuff is outdated, oh and low and behold I find out that one of the sats we are trying to talk to, on, whatever, has been dead for like YEARS – SO-35 DEAD. Now that upset me. I try to dig deeper and either THEY want money or I get shined on because I am not a member! What the heck? I am a new ham here, I thought older Hams were supposed to help out the new ones, give me something right? On more than one occasion I was treated like I was talking a foreign language.
I will not be discouraged! The following weekend I have fairly good intel on 8 sats, we got 3 computers, each tracking a separate upcoming event on Amsat. After setting things up, winter and all its dark again. Do they work at night? We don’t know, lets try. This time we transmit on the FO-29 BAM! Clear as a bell, it starts fading, I run outside all excited and move the antennas, its back! Cool! Its working! Theres no one there!!! At this time we did not realize this is a SSB sat, but it was definitely working. Ok we are getting somewhere finally. The next satellite, we are checking the frequencies, making sure the coax is on the right antenna/rig, we check the position and elevation, the web page goes down! Great now what, we are blind!! By this time it is really late and the next pass is not till like 5 or 6 am. Amsat is working again so we track a couple “dumb” sats and hear the telemetry so we think we got it down right? Here comes the SO-50, we are Ready, downlink good, uplink good, pl good, nothing… Man, what are we doing wrong? Well we find out later you have to “arm” the sat by sending a CTCSS Tone 74.4hz then transmit on 145.850 pl 67hz. Little bit of useful information there.
Finally here comes the AO-51, its like 7 am Sat morning, I’m all “wake up Jim, its here! I can hear people cmom!!” I key up total rookie “CQ Satellite KF7MYK DM09 DM09 CQ Satellite!!” everybody is ignoring me. I ask my brother “what the hell” he goes “Break in there!” … “Break Satellite KF7MYK” and the guy goes “go ahead MYK you broke it now you fix it!” I really could not believe what a jerk this guy was, we just let it go, we were losing the sat by that time anyway and who cares I talked on a satellite! Yaaa! I was totally jazzed.
At this point we were also setting up for a 10 meter contest so we got verticals, di-poles, yagis everywhere testing our mobile stuff, finding out where we had failures like battery power, what antennas were good for what, mostly homemade stuff, and some store bought. Basically making a huge mess, trying not to break anything, doing ten things at once, the usual, it worked too! Lots of contacts. Surprisingly, haha, 10-meters died out after a short while we went back to the satellites, here comes the AO-27 everything is ready, so I decided to start playin with Doppler shift or whatever and I tune myself right in, oh boy! This one sure is loud! Boy, I sure got this down now! Hmmm I don’t hear anyone but me, we let Jims daughter talk, he authorizes it, boy those guys are dumb, I am slamin this sat! Little did I know that I had tuned into a harmonic we duplicated later and was transmitting on the AO-27, not hearing anything because I was on the wrong frequency and somebody sent me a recording of it. Now who is stupid? Well live and learn, I mean hey this is my first day right? Jim ends up making a short contact and I did finally make a night time contact. So we had about as many successes as we did failures that weekend, not very encouraging. We are not getting any help, what are we doing wrong, a lot of work for so little a reward, people are mean, wasn’t looking too good.
I of course would not be discouraged! I go home and start making antennas and researching away and FINALLY get some really good advice from a guy that I had talked with on the AO-51. He tells me how to have better form, and just say call sign and locater and wait, or if I hear some one call there locater followed by mine then continue the contact and make the qso. Much more professional, he directs me to some sites and recordings so now I start to see things a little clearer, I also find out that there are actual schedules and different modes at different times, some are SSB only, one is daylight only, you know the kind of things that you really need to know BEFORE hand would have been nice. I had a hard time navigating around the web to find user friendly sites and reliable information, like this was some big secret or something and it really made me angry. I was starting to turn green! I mean really, can I put away the big wheel and play with the big boys now or what?
This time around we were way more confident, we had talked about getting ready earlier, about Doppler shift, setting the antennas pointing towards the horizon of the oncoming sat. Had our own satellite tracking freeware. Not listening to my brother I found out the hard way that a good antenna and coax are really important so you can hear, after people sending me recordings of me talking on the sats and NOT hearing anyone. It is easy to hit the sats with only 5 watts, its hearing the weak signal that is important. I had made several attempts at my house without the proper equipment. I found that people were surprisingly nice and helpful to me, mostly likely they just wanted me to stop clogging up the passes! Which I did stop doing after realizing there were other people trying to talk to me and I was deaf if not dumb also.
So after verifying what sats were what, what was on and what mode the sats were in (checking the schedule), having updated keplerian data for the tracking software, getting schooled on my form, shooting for a longer duration, and more contacts per pass we find ourselves setting up late after work on Thursday for another attempt at working the sats. Jim gets a good contact on the Ao-51 right off, the elevation was low and with the surrounding Sierras the pass was short but sweet. We finish setting everything up, knowing this time that there really are only 4 FM sats that we can work, leaving the SSB sats for the big boys, the next pass is optimal, like a 89.6, sure seems quiet… we send a couple test transmissions, the footprint of the sat well within range, nothing. This is strange; it was working fine on the last pass. Then we here it, slow CW. OMG there are like ten plus telemetry sats in the sky and the control operators turn the easiest sat to work over to THEM. I check the schedule again and sure enough there it was, a day early in my opinion! We were just devastated, really looking forward to talking on that one again…There was not much else coming, so we worked on the driven element for my experimental 14 element yagi, and some mountaintop di-poles. From what little past experience we had there is not to many people on late at night, so I just talked to myself on a few passes just because, printed out the next days pass predictions…
The following day was perfect, this is what we had set up: A Diamond 10 element 70cm yagi and 5 element 2m yagi on a homemade pvc stand one wavelength apart, up only 6ft or so. Just a test stand for manual tracking of the sats. The really good low loss coax 50 ft each, a Yaesu FT-7900 for the receive and a Yaesu FT-857 for the transmit. I had four computer stations all running SatBuster, each one tracking its own sat, and paperwork with all the freqs and different sorts of info backing that up!
With the AO-51 on CW Mode and the SO-67 on off schedual, my only remaining chances were on the SO-50 and the AO-27 luckily the HO-68 was on FM mode!!! Now having had said that, I was all prepared, here they come practically one after the other, I was making contacts left and right, barely enough time to set up for the next pass, the new Ham that I am I had a hard time writing down all the calls and locators fast enough. Being that as it may, I think they let me in because I had a good clean signal, and a more professional approach than before. I talked to this one guy on three different Birds! I can call them “birds” now because we have earned it!
Anyway before I knew it the sun was going down again and I was plum tuckered out! Jim had gotten called into work so I was solo on this escapade. All said and done I made 11 solid contacts not including the repeats, I was like not you again! Some of the passes were an easy 15 minutes, but I found that some of the people were hogging the birds and some of the contacts I made I had to be assertive to get them. Also I thought it was funny that I was being ignored by the same people that were mean to me in the beginning. I mean seriously, some of these guys are ragchewin in the middle of the day like they owned it! I don’t know, I talked with a guy in Oregon for a while one time on the 51, but it was like 4:30 in the morning and no one else was there at all, so whatever.
Looking back I think we have done really well so far, considering the only help we got was from a couple nice fellow sat users. Here is some advice, I know I am new but this is what works for me.
You have to have a good receive antenna AND good coax, if you have say a 10db gain antenna and bad coax your not accomplishing anything! If you can’t hear yourself on the downlink clearly, don’t bother. This is weak signal work.
You need to know where the sat is exactly, I like Satbuster, pick one you like, there free, Orbitron etc…Using your own is better than relying on web based stuff that can fail at the worst times.
There is a lot of talk about how to make your calls, I have found it to be like shootin skip sometimes, some people are rude, most people are very professional. Listen to some recordings on U-Tube or something, I should have done that.
The Trials and Tribulations of Satellite Communication
Shortly after obtaining my Ham Radio License my brother KD7QDG introduced me to the idea of talking on Satellites. At first I was not real sure what the heck he was talking about, however the fact that he had been a Ham since 02’ and his background with IT and Communications, I trusted him. The idea sounded a lot more interesting and challenging than hitting the local or even distant repeaters. He had not made a contact yet so that interested me even more, plus anything that mixes computers and radios together, I am all for it!
Having all the right equipment (we’ll get into that later) we get everything set up and not knowing what the heck I am doing I set out on this new adventure with great enthusiasm. James shows me the Amsat page with the satellite coming towards us, we set the frequencies for receive and transmit, we got the antennas set up in the driveway, and we hear nothing. Is the thing on? Are the frequencies good? How does this work? Now keep in mind there is no operating manual for this (which is what this is all about) and we were pretty frustrated. I had a LOT of questions and no answers. Sure Amsat has a lot of information but to the beginner it really was not that helpful.
I go home more intrigued than ever, I start a file on all these sats, only the ones that you can talk on, not really interested in just receiving telemetry, I want to be heard, this isn’t data entry here, I want to communicate right? So I really am not finding much other than what Amsat has and all the other stuff is outdated, oh and low and behold I find out that one of the sats we are trying to talk to, on, whatever, has been dead for like YEARS – SO-35 DEAD. Now that upset me. I try to dig deeper and either THEY want money or I get shined on because I am not a member! What the heck? I am a new ham here, I thought older Hams were supposed to help out the new ones, give me something right? On more than one occasion I was treated like I was talking a foreign language.
I will not be discouraged! The following weekend I have fairly good intel on 8 sats, we got 3 computers, each tracking a separate upcoming event on Amsat. After setting things up, winter and all its dark again. Do they work at night? We don’t know, lets try. This time we transmit on the FO-29 BAM! Clear as a bell, it starts fading, I run outside all excited and move the antennas, its back! Cool! Its working! Theres no one there!!! At this time we did not realize this is a SSB sat, but it was definitely working. Ok we are getting somewhere finally. The next satellite, we are checking the frequencies, making sure the coax is on the right antenna/rig, we check the position and elevation, the web page goes down! Great now what, we are blind!! By this time it is really late and the next pass is not till like 5 or 6 am. Amsat is working again so we track a couple “dumb” sats and hear the telemetry so we think we got it down right? Here comes the SO-50, we are Ready, downlink good, uplink good, pl good, nothing… Man, what are we doing wrong? Well we find out later you have to “arm” the sat by sending a CTCSS Tone 74.4hz then transmit on 145.850 pl 67hz. Little bit of useful information there.
Finally here comes the AO-51, its like 7 am Sat morning, I’m all “wake up Jim, its here! I can hear people cmom!!” I key up total rookie “CQ Satellite KF7MYK DM09 DM09 CQ Satellite!!” everybody is ignoring me. I ask my brother “what the hell” he goes “Break in there!” … “Break Satellite KF7MYK” and the guy goes “go ahead MYK you broke it now you fix it!” I really could not believe what a jerk this guy was, we just let it go, we were losing the sat by that time anyway and who cares I talked on a satellite! Yaaa! I was totally jazzed.
At this point we were also setting up for a 10 meter contest so we got verticals, di-poles, yagis everywhere testing our mobile stuff, finding out where we had failures like battery power, what antennas were good for what, mostly homemade stuff, and some store bought. Basically making a huge mess, trying not to break anything, doing ten things at once, the usual, it worked too! Lots of contacts. Surprisingly, haha, 10-meters died out after a short while we went back to the satellites, here comes the AO-27 everything is ready, so I decided to start playin with Doppler shift or whatever and I tune myself right in, oh boy! This one sure is loud! Boy, I sure got this down now! Hmmm I don’t hear anyone but me, we let Jims daughter talk, he authorizes it, boy those guys are dumb, I am slamin this sat! Little did I know that I had tuned into a harmonic we duplicated later and was transmitting on the AO-27, not hearing anything because I was on the wrong frequency and somebody sent me a recording of it. Now who is stupid? Well live and learn, I mean hey this is my first day right? Jim ends up making a short contact and I did finally make a night time contact. So we had about as many successes as we did failures that weekend, not very encouraging. We are not getting any help, what are we doing wrong, a lot of work for so little a reward, people are mean, wasn’t looking too good.
I of course would not be discouraged! I go home and start making antennas and researching away and FINALLY get some really good advice from a guy that I had talked with on the AO-51. He tells me how to have better form, and just say call sign and locater and wait, or if I hear some one call there locater followed by mine then continue the contact and make the qso. Much more professional, he directs me to some sites and recordings so now I start to see things a little clearer, I also find out that there are actual schedules and different modes at different times, some are SSB only, one is daylight only, you know the kind of things that you really need to know BEFORE hand would have been nice. I had a hard time navigating around the web to find user friendly sites and reliable information, like this was some big secret or something and it really made me angry. I was starting to turn green! I mean really, can I put away the big wheel and play with the big boys now or what?
This time around we were way more confident, we had talked about getting ready earlier, about Doppler shift, setting the antennas pointing towards the horizon of the oncoming sat. Had our own satellite tracking freeware. Not listening to my brother I found out the hard way that a good antenna and coax are really important so you can hear, after people sending me recordings of me talking on the sats and NOT hearing anyone. It is easy to hit the sats with only 5 watts, its hearing the weak signal that is important. I had made several attempts at my house without the proper equipment. I found that people were surprisingly nice and helpful to me, mostly likely they just wanted me to stop clogging up the passes! Which I did stop doing after realizing there were other people trying to talk to me and I was deaf if not dumb also.
So after verifying what sats were what, what was on and what mode the sats were in (checking the schedule), having updated keplerian data for the tracking software, getting schooled on my form, shooting for a longer duration, and more contacts per pass we find ourselves setting up late after work on Thursday for another attempt at working the sats. Jim gets a good contact on the Ao-51 right off, the elevation was low and with the surrounding Sierras the pass was short but sweet. We finish setting everything up, knowing this time that there really are only 4 FM sats that we can work, leaving the SSB sats for the big boys, the next pass is optimal, like a 89.6, sure seems quiet… we send a couple test transmissions, the footprint of the sat well within range, nothing. This is strange; it was working fine on the last pass. Then we here it, slow CW. OMG there are like ten plus telemetry sats in the sky and the control operators turn the easiest sat to work over to THEM. I check the schedule again and sure enough there it was, a day early in my opinion! We were just devastated, really looking forward to talking on that one again…There was not much else coming, so we worked on the driven element for my experimental 14 element yagi, and some mountaintop di-poles. From what little past experience we had there is not to many people on late at night, so I just talked to myself on a few passes just because, printed out the next days pass predictions…
The following day was perfect, this is what we had set up: A Diamond 10 element 70cm yagi and 5 element 2m yagi on a homemade pvc stand one wavelength apart, up only 6ft or so. Just a test stand for manual tracking of the sats. The really good low loss coax 50 ft each, a Yaesu FT-7900 for the receive and a Yaesu FT-857 for the transmit. I had four computer stations all running SatBuster, each one tracking its own sat, and paperwork with all the freqs and different sorts of info backing that up!
With the AO-51 on CW Mode and the SO-67 on off schedual, my only remaining chances were on the SO-50 and the AO-27 luckily the HO-68 was on FM mode!!! Now having had said that, I was all prepared, here they come practically one after the other, I was making contacts left and right, barely enough time to set up for the next pass, the new Ham that I am I had a hard time writing down all the calls and locators fast enough. Being that as it may, I think they let me in because I had a good clean signal, and a more professional approach than before. I talked to this one guy on three different Birds! I can call them “birds” now because we have earned it!
Anyway before I knew it the sun was going down again and I was plum tuckered out! Jim had gotten called into work so I was solo on this escapade. All said and done I made 11 solid contacts not including the repeats, I was like not you again! Some of the passes were an easy 15 minutes, but I found that some of the people were hogging the birds and some of the contacts I made I had to be assertive to get them. Also I thought it was funny that I was being ignored by the same people that were mean to me in the beginning. I mean seriously, some of these guys are ragchewin in the middle of the day like they owned it! I don’t know, I talked with a guy in Oregon for a while one time on the 51, but it was like 4:30 in the morning and no one else was there at all, so whatever.
Looking back I think we have done really well so far, considering the only help we got was from a couple nice fellow sat users. Here is some advice, I know I am new but this is what works for me.
You have to have a good receive antenna AND good coax, if you have say a 10db gain antenna and bad coax your not accomplishing anything! If you can’t hear yourself on the downlink clearly, don’t bother. This is weak signal work.
You need to know where the sat is exactly, I like Satbuster, pick one you like, there free, Orbitron etc…Using your own is better than relying on web based stuff that can fail at the worst times.
There is a lot of talk about how to make your calls, I have found it to be like shootin skip sometimes, some people are rude, most people are very professional. Listen to some recordings on U-Tube or something, I should have done that.