innismir.net

Jeff Atwood has, once again, hit one out of the park. I always wonder how he always seems to come up with these great posts, seemingly pulling them out of thin air, while my weblog just seems to post satellite audio.

Ugh… I can’t believe I’m going to embed a YouTube video on my web page… BUT…

John, KB2HSH, posted this fantastic video on Eggbeater Antenna construction, and made it so simple even a drooling fool like myself can understand it. Plus, the materials suggested are friendly to the solderphobic (which, I need to get over quickly).

Kudos John!

Now… If I only had a roof to put antennas on…

Just some recordings from the past few days of AO-51. Not the best quality, as on the 22nd I had a snow plow clearing the parking lot around me, and on the 25th, it was a low pass to the west.

I’m coming to the conclusion that I can work lower elevations on eastern passes then I can on western passes, I assume it’s because the main thing to the east of my QTH is the Atlantic, while to the west is the rest of the US. At least that’s my current guess. I could just be talking out of my ass again.

• Feb 22nd, 18:10EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 8:02, 3.2MB)
• Feb 25th, 19:32EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 6:30, 2.6MB)

One of the cool things about the new job, is that they are very pro-conference. Even better, they have a budget for conferences that cost money! Source Boston sounds really cool. While it may not be as cool as DEFCON or ShmooCon, it definitely has that “hacker-ish” feel to it. Of course, any conference with a pub crawl associated with it definitely gets the thumbs up from me.

Some more passes for your listening enjoyment:

• Feb 9th, 07:12EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 8:16, 2.3MB)
• Feb 9th, 08:54EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 6:54, 4.1MB)
• Feb 9th, 18:25EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 10:51, 4.3MB)

The AO-51 command crew has decided to shut off the 2 meter uplink and turned on the 1.2GHz uplink between Tuesdays and Thursdays during the month of February. This gives me a break from my addiction, which I guess is a good thing.

I’ve started to set up an online logbook. Which is a bit buggy and spartan, but a start. It’s also handy to keep statistics.

I had a nice blog entry describing all the saturday passes I worked, but Pants ate it.

Here are the recordings, I’ll type them up later.

• Feb 2nd, 08:30EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 5:31, 2.3MB)
• Feb 2nd, 18:03EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 9:56, 4.1MB) (Warning, GSM noise due to my mobile phone)
• Feb 2nd, 19:44EST AO-51 pass (MP3, 8:40, 3.6MB)

This came in the mail this week. I’ve been meaning to post it. KI4YZI’s QSL beat out K7WIN’s QSL by about two days, making it my first satellite QSL card:

I printed out some QSL cards on my printer so I can send return cards until I get my first batch in from the printers. They’re the same design and same size, so there really should be much difference besides the quality of the cardboard stock I think.

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