This is a little package I put together to work some of the easier satellites. In particular UO-14, and AO-27. Here you see a 3 element 2 meter yagi antenna. But wait look at the shadow behind the antenna. There are clearly more elements in the shadow then there are showing on the antenna. No this is not magic. The seven missing elements are being looked at head on. The is a dual band cross yagi. This design comes from Arrow Antennas. This particular model was designed for the two earlier mentioned satellites. Lets take a closer look and see what kind of radios are hooked up to it. 
Upon closer inspection, we see that the antenna is mounted to a standard camera tripod. This makes the antenna much easier to handle then using your hand. The top radio is a Radio Shack Pro-70 Scanner. This is hooked up to the 7-element UHF section of the Arrow. The bottom radio is a Kenwood TR-2600A 2 meter HT. This puts out a little over 1.8 Watts. It doesn't seem like much. But its rumored that AO-27 has a very sensitive uplink.
The tripod folds up nicely. The radios are mounted to the tripod by separate methods. The scanner hangs on its belt hook from a tie wrap on the tripod, and the other radio is just velcroed to the tripod's leg. This makes it easy to snatch the uplink radio, when you hear activity on the downlink.
The antenna breaks down and fits very nicely into this old display box my roommate gave me. There is even enough room for a compass to ride along in the upper left corner.

It might seem kind of goofy to place all these parts in a box with a glass face. And I took a moment to think about that. I came to the conclusion that if I spent 100 dollars on an antenna, I want to put it in a place where the elements won't bend. Further more, if the glass were to break it would be a sign that I am not storing or transporting my expensive antenna in a fashion that is worthy of it. Ergo In case of neglect break glass.
Altogether I feel that this kit breaks down into a minimum of parts and is easily transportable. It takes only minutes to setup. You don't have to juggle components when your working a sat, and the antenna can be pointed in virtually any direction. That's all great, but the proof is in the pudding. So how does this setup perform???

 
As the sun sets nicely through my dirt ridden windows. I reflect on the experience I had the night before when I tested this set up in a field located in  Geneva, Fl. 

It was 10:30PM. Soon UO-14 will be passing over to the West. At 5 before 11, the downlink was heard. Solid copy. The scanner I was using was 5Khz off and the copy was still solid. The UHF portion of this Yagi worked excellent. However, despite repeated attempts to trigger the uplink, at 1.8 Watts with a 3 element 2 meter yagi, UO-14 just couldn't hear me. I'll have to try for AO-27 instead.

A bit anti-climatic you might say? Maybe. But I have never set up a yagi before, I have never heard UO-14 with such clarity before, and I have yet to feel that the experience was for the loss. In fact each time I turn on my radio, I learn something new, and that's what its really all about for me.

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