AO-7, VO-52 & AO-51

In between cleaning my motor cycles, I have spent today in and out of the shack as I have been closely monitoring the various Satellite passes over my QTH.

I started the day early making QSO via the AO-7 Satellite at 08.44 utc with three stations from Europe - 9A2EY, EA1BYC and ON5NY.

The next "Bird" I worked via was VO-52, where I made QSO with OZ2SAT & DL7UHF at around 10.32 utc.

I then tried my luck again at 16.11 utc where I got into AO-51 which is an FM Satellite which always proves a bit more difficult than the SSB Sats that I worked through earlier. Despite the European pile up and only one station working at a time via the FM transponder, I still managed to work S57ORG who was quickly followed by ES5QA. I heard many other European Ops calling through the bird during the pass, as usual it was chaotic but still lots of fun.

To work the Satellites, I am still using my reliable home brewed IO-10 dual band Sat yagi with its 30º fixed elevation (seen on my QRZ page & this blog).

I have big plans for next spring when I shall hopefully set up my recently acquired Oscar 435 30 Element X beam and 145 Yagi which will be controlled by a GS5500 Azi/Ele rotator (seen in the picture below). I will still be keeping my IO-10 El set up at this QTH as we are in the process of obtaining a second QTH. There I shall be installing some nice/big antennas for both Satellite and HF work. The Sat antenna pictured above is a sneak preview of some of the new equipment & antennas that I have been putting together recently for my new/second shack. Fortunately for me I have more HF antennas on standby waiting to be erected at the other QTH next spring. I am looking forward to posting more detail regarding this in the near future but for now you will have to imagine what I will be up to hi hi.(Besides changing nappies and being a Dad!)