What would be nice is to have a straight forward table of transmit and receive link budgets at various elevations for each of the satellites so that the potential for success with a given receiver (or transmitter) and antenna system could be easily calculated. Better yet would be a link budget calculator that would spit out the results.
- Glenn W9IQ
Wow ... you sound like an engineer - so you may not like my answer (grin).
The FM Voice LEO satellites with 2M downlinks (including the ISS) are VERY easy to HEAR with minimal equipment: Many hear them with stock antennas on their HTs.
There are even hams who are successfully working them with stock HT antennas - but that is, of course, not the preferred method: You really want some gain in your antenna system.
Satellite SO-50 and its 436.795-ish downlink really require an upgraded antenna to hear well.
When working the FM LEOs, Doppler accommodation is required on the 440 side of comms, since that frequency can deviate as much as +/- 10kHZ on a decent pass. The same pass only has about a +/- 3kHZ deviation on 2M.
Frequency chart for the "easy" sats is published at
www.work-sat.com - including the ISS' SSTV, crosswind repeater, and 2M FM voice pairs.