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I was delayed slightly this morning leaving the house which made it impossible to catch the train. This was OK, as I could drive up to the subway in Quincy and enjoy a relatively high pass of AO-51.

As the pass neared I was driving up Rt. 24. What worried me was I wanted to make sure I would be in one grid square during the pass, so I had to get past a certain latitude in order to move from FN41 to FN42. Thankfully, I was well into FN42 by the time of the pass. I patiently listened to the radio waiting for the satellite to come overhead…

Nothing. No sound. I could tell something was there as the squelch had died down, but there was no voices. The rule of thumb for satellite operation is that you shouldn’t transmit until you hear the satellite. This is usually easy on evening passes because there are tons of people exchanging contacts; not so much this morning. I decided to thrown caution into the wind and tossed out my callsign, despite me not sure if I was “hearing” the satellite…

… and I was promptly greeting by AA4FL in Florida. We exchanged grid squares and we had a lovely conversation regarding the lack of people on the satellite, the upcoming Super Bowl, and the pass the Tuesday night previous. We were very surprised it was just us and paused for other stations to come in if they were waiting. In short order though, I was going down a hill and was losing the signal. I signed off with him, and continued listening another 4-land station work him, but I couldn’t make out his or her callsign and the satellite was definitely too low for me to work.

That was an enjoyable QSO. It would have been fun to get a few more people on the satellite, but I was very happy to have some kind of conversation with someone over it and not have to worry about squeezing in between other stations in an attempt to be heard.

Stations Worked:

• AA4FL – EL89 – Hawthorne, FL