Satellites at MW0BBU.

I had often wondered about the Ham Satellites and just how difficult it might be to work through them, after all you always see these great arrays of educated aluminium pointing skywards. Anyway one day I just thought " What the heck" and stuck up a couple of the VHF/UHF Beams I had laying around here which happened to be a 2m 5 ele J beam and a 9 ele tonna for 70cm.

I connected the 2m to the FT897D and the 70CM to the FT817 and just proceeded to listen for the "birds", to my suprise even without a preamp I was getting pretty good signals off the FM satellites so decided to have a crack and haven,t looked back since.

Mind you I have changed out the J beam for a 9 ele Tonna and the rig is now an FT847 which does make it somewhat easier on the SSB sats. Anyway even with fixed elevation and a little practice I have managed here at MW0BBU to work over 300 stations via satellite.

DXCC Entities Via Satellite..

I Italy ES Estonia
EA8 Canary Isl LY Lithuania
PA Holland YL Latvia
ON Beligum OH Finland
SP Poland LA Norway
UR Ukraine DL Germany
LX Luxembourg EI Ireland
GM Scotland G England
GW Wales EA6 Balaeric Isl
SV Greece YT Serbia
W USA F France
OE Austria OK Czech Rep
OM Slovakia SM Sweden
HA Hungary OZ Denmark
YO Romania 9A Croatia
RA Russia UN Kazakhstan
CU Azores TF Iceland
CT Portugal HB9 Switzerland
S5 Slovenia UA9 Asiatic Russia

Thats 38 DXCC entities and with only around 20w.
VHF/UHF isn't dead it just needs using in the right place.

Have fun with radio and don't be afraid to have a go at something new.

All the best from MW0BBU.

73,s
Steve... MW0BBU.

January 2011 on 15m de MW0BBU

The month started off quite quiet here at MW0BBU on 15m with only a couple of JT65-HF qso,s in to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe working ES2MA ,OH7FMT and SP2IPU all with quite strong signals.

On the 11th the band started to open up a little more with stations of 9K2UU being worked on SSB with good 59+ signals. The next couple of days proved to be quite good on 15m with stations of HZ1AN Saudi Arabia, JY4NE Jordan, J28RO Djibouti, VQ9LA Chargos Isl, EA8/DL3KVR Canary Isl and CT9/OH2OT Madeira Isl all worked on CW with very good 599 signals.

On SSB in the same period the stations of OX3KQ Greenland, W2RE Usa, HZ1BO Saudi Arabia and 9H5JW all worked quite easily on the Dipole.

After the 19th of the month it seemed to go quiet with just the odd station on the band but still managed to squeeze out the stations of 9J2KK Zambia and ZS5DJ on JT65-HF even though their signals were very weak.

Around the 26th the band opened into near Europe and the stations of UT5IP, SP9XCJ, UY1CI, LZ2CF and HA6VH were all worked with very good signals on CW. Later in the afternoon the band opened slightly and the stations of XT2RJA Burkina Faso and KP2M US Virgin Is were worked again on CW reasonably well with 559 signals.

Lets hope that February will bring some improved conditions and allow some good DX to be worked.

Thats all for this month, enjoy the bands which ever one is your favourite, good DX.

73,s.
Steve.... MW0BBU.

from the JT65 log of MW0BBU

Thanks for these Steve...All done with 25w into a 15m dipole using the mode of JT65.

From the recent log of Steve...MW0BBU...

Here's some recent activity sent in from the log of MW0BBU...Steve....on the 15m band.

CW.
5X1NH 10:43 UGANDA
UK8IF 10:56 UZBEKISTAN
N2KW 13:26 USA
XE3RT 14:00 MEXICO
3B8CF 14:24 MAURITIUS
C6AKQ 14:29 BAHAMAS
4K9W 10:18 AZERBAIJAN

SSB
7Z1TT 13:15 SAUDI ARABIA
BG7KFZ 09:25 CHINA
RJ3DX/AM 10:13 RUSSIA

JT65-HF
VE3VA 14:53 CANADA
AD5ZA 15:13 USA... TEXAS
ZS1AGF 12:54 SOUTH AFRICA
ZS2I 15:40 SOUTH AFRICA
WH6IO 15:05 USA.... KANSAS
ZS6AKU 15:43 SOUTH AFRICA

Nice contacts Steve.....when the radio shack finally thaws out I will be trying out a dipole for the band.....mw0mjb