14:40 UTC – thanks John, K8YSE (truly madly deeply…)
The North American Pass of SO-67 on 27 Dec 2009 at 1443z is now on my webserver. The bird was strong as usual. It is difficult not to respond immediately to a call to your station, but those that wait for the “tail timer” to expire, will have more than 3 seconds to exchange their information.
Watch the S meter and wait for the tail to expire before you transmit. This doesn’t always work if there are others still transmitting after the tail timer expires. Their signal is not repeated but it prevents the repeater from re-transmitting your signal.
Full duplex allows you to hear the bird when you are transmitting and makes successful qso’s much easier.
We have two new satellites to work with but they don’t work exactly like AO-51 etc.
Each bird has their own unique characteristic and it’s up to us to figure out what works and then do it.
The problem is that everyone doesn’t do that and this leads to chaos and not many qso’s. I hope this will be resolved such that these new birds work somewhat like the old ones. With their high power (both SO-67 and HO-68) and the higher orbit on HO-68, they have a lot of potential.