Click here to see my STARmount in operation!
Listening to a recent talk at the Bolton Wireless Club from Andy G1EFP, I learnt that the "geriatric" Amateur satellite OSCAR-7 (launched just before my 12th birthday!) has miraculously come back to life after 25 years!
The satellite's batteries died back in 1981, but they have now gone open-circuit, thus allowing the satellite to rejuvenate itself whenever its solar panels capture enough energy.
This "bird" has a dual-band linear transponder on-board, with an uplink on 70cm (LSB) and downlink on 2m (USB), so I have rigged up a pair of beams to try to operate through it.
In its low-Earth orbit, OSCAR-7 passes over in just a few minutes, and so needs rapid-tracking antennas. I've used a little battery-powered rotator (designed for caravan aerials), to make my "STARmount" (Satellite Tracking Antenna Rotator!) which allows the single-axis motor to follow the satellite across the sky:
I had practised operating through satellites back in the mid-1990s, so it didn't take me long to re-master the ancient art of Doppler-shift tuning and get my signal through - listen to my signals coming back from the satellite as it passed over on 8-Oct-2009.
Watch "this space" for more developments...
Meanwhile, check out when the next satellite passes over on the Heavens-Above website.