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.