Saturday, July 31, 2010

VU2SWG heard in South Africa - on HO - 68 - A New record Distance????

Below is the text of the message posted on SARL discussion board on XW-1 (HO-68)

Great going Shankar - Wish you many more DX - and wishing ourselves also the same :P
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Working the XW-1 Satellite


Printed from: SARL Discussion Forums
Topic URL: http://www.sarl.org.za/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4861
Printed on: 31/07/2010
Reply author: ZS6BNE
Replied on: 28/06/2010 10:09:41
Message:


A message from Hal , ZS6WB off ZS-Sat.


The HO-68 FM pass on Sunday morning, 27 June at 27/0552 utc was fun and although not all the stations  expected to be on turned up for the pass, the satellite performance was every bit as good as was expected.


As the satellite came over the horizon VU2SWG was heard by ZS6WB in contact with Jim, VQ9JC/MM (MI62) in the Chagos Islands, but by the time the QSO had been completed the very short window to India had closed. The next station heard was ET3SID in Ethiopia calling CQ but Sid was apparently not hearing other stations. Other stations that joined in during the pass included FR1GZ (LG79), ZR5JT (KG61), ZS2BK (KF26) and ZS6BNE/P (KG33). All stations heard today on the satellite were very strong with the exception of VU2SWG.


The pass was excellent and hopefully we will have more passes of this type scheduled in the future.


A report was received from Shankar, VU2SWG in Bangalore, India (MK82TW) telling a bit about his station. He was using a Yaesu FT-8800R transceiver running about 25 watts out with a Diamond X510M Base Station Antenna. It was fantastic that he was heard using his omnidirectional antenna over the 6848 km between his QTH in India and ZS6WB.


A report was also received from Jim, ET3JD reporting that he was monitoring but was not set up to transmit. He heard an Indian station that was probably VU2SWG, VQ9JC/MM but he had his hands full of  equipment and wasn't able to record any of the calls he heard.


We will watch further HO-68 schedules closely and try to set up schedules with stations in areas where there are good DX opportunities.


Hal ZS6WB
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73 de Eddie ZS6BNE
SARL Member
SA AMSAT Member
LARK (ZS6LRK) Chairman / QSL Manager
RaDAR Operator
http://www.nwinternet.za.org/zs6bne/RaDAR
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