I don't know how worthwhile having switchable CP is these days. In the old "Phase III" days, with the satellites out at 35,000 km, it definitely helped, as did the huge antennas.
Ah! Oscar 13! It brings a tear to my eye. My first weekend on the air I missed the first half of the pass on Saturday, because I was building the beams from scratch. Just as I went operational... the bird switched to Mode-S. But when she switched back to B, I worked it right until it went over the hill. And the Sunday, I worked AOS to LOS. It was a total of 197 QSOs, all over Canada, the USA, SA, EU, and as far afield as A21 and as close as J39. And the 970 was an absolute dream, even for a rank never-worked-a-bird, novice like me.
If you're working an FM bird with a hand-held antenna, the guys who do it all the time say that rotating the antenna in their hand can help, but since I rarely operate like that, I can't really comment.
I gotta tell you that standing in the garden, waving around a broomstick-beam and hoping for a 20-second QSO with a nearby station? Doesn't compare with leaning back in my chair, with my feet on the desk, a fortified coffee at my elbow, and ragchewing for hours into the night. Or hearing the SA crowd working local simplex FM unaware that AO-13 was racing by at perigee, only 900 Km over their heads. Oh, well. Maybe those days will come again before I QRT once and for all.
But I will give the LEO FM birds a try. The second A270-10S is now ready to be phased with the first for either +3dB or CP. Alas, the wonderful IC-970H is dead. And given where I am, getting it revived is prohibitively expensive, when I compare with the price of a new rig. But to be honest, the footprints are so small that there is mostly only water for me to talk to. Or SA, and I
No hablo.For the current linear transponder birds, I just use an M2 2M7 2 meter 7-element antenna, and an M2 420-450-11 70cm 11-element antenna. These are linearly polarized, and while I occasionally get some fade on AO-7, the simplicity outweighs the "niceness" of having switchable polarization.
Well, the two Cushcraft mini-beams might work out for me then, until something gets launched that needs a 'real' antenna! :-)
I've got a KLM 435-CX40 in the garage, but it's HUGE...
But it shore works good! I've even copied W5UN and other stations with those two KLM yagis, in CW and even some verrrry weak SSB, off the moon! But of course, with ~50 watts output, they didn't hear me...
If you have the room, and the budget, M2 has 2 meter and 70cm CP antennas. They currently sell 2MCP14, 2MCP22, 436CP30 and 436CP42UG. They don't use the folded dipole driven element like the KLM antennas do, but they're typical M2 quality.
No, I don't have the room, but that can be fixed. No, I don't have the budget, but if you live on bread and water long enough, you find you can afford most things. I've looked at the M2 antennas and they look good but the driven elements strike me as unnecessarily complicated. But who knows? Maybe the KLMs can be refurbished! I'll check out the AMSAT-BB archives and see what I can find out about it.
The AG-25 and AG-35 preamps are old designs, and suffer from a high noise figure.
Agreed. But they gave a useful boost to signals and they really played well with the old 970, which sequenced them without effort and even supplied power up the coax.
For tracking, I really like SatPC32. It can control your rotors, and correct for Doppler, and ALL of the proceeds from the purchase of the program go to AMSAT.
For religious reasons, nothing manufactured in Redmond may enter my house. So I have to look elsewhere for my tracking software. :-) But I need to get the G-5400B assessed before I make any plans in that direction anyhow.
Can't help you with the digital satellites, as I've never had the equipment to work them, other than bouncing APRS packets through the Space Station.
Well, it was the days of the launch of the Magnificent Seven and I had to try it out. Pretty good fun, but all the effort was prior to AOS. Once the system acquired the bird, you sat back with your hands in your lap and let the groundstation software do all the work. I don't even know if there are any Store'n'Forward satellites flying! But there are enough terrestrial digital modes, and if I get some hardware for that, I'll have to be sure it can handle digital satellites as well.
Long post! Sorry about that. (Ragchewer at heart!) I'll try to restrain myself from now. Once again, thanks for getting back to me. So, for now...
73.