At one time an amateur satellite station required expensive or specialised equipment such as VHF and UHF SSB equipment and elaborate steerable antennas. You also needed to manually calculate satellite pass times or use a computer program that required continual entry of data to remain accurate.
Now it's simpler. A new breed of satellites are effectively orbiting FM repeaters. A few watts from an FM handheld transceiver can be enough to work the easier satellites. Pass times are now available online so there is no need to calculate them. And suitable antennas are easy to build and cheap to buy. You may even be able to do it with just the antenna that comes with your handheld transceiver.
The simplest satellites to get on to are all low earth orbiters. Because they pass close to earth signals from them are strong and are audible with simple antennas. The low earth orbits mean that passes are short. This in conjunction with the satellite being a single channel repeater means that most satellite contacts are brief unless you operate at a time when most are asleep. A current list of satellites available for communications is on the AMSAT website.
Intrigued? Read the rest of this article on my website.
PS: Enjoy these well-reviewed books on various amateur radio topics. They're available for under $US 5 each in electronic form. Or you can get them in paperback. Visit VK3YE Radio Books to find out more.
No comments:
Post a Comment