Satellite Rag Chewing on a Shoestring
Like many of us old time hams, over the past 60 years I have moved from novice CW to AM phone, to that new-fangled SSB and FM repeaters. The past 20 years have been devoted to QRP, Straight Key Century Club, Summits on the Air, Parks on the Air, PSK-31, QRP, and QRO rag chewing and DXing, among many other aspects of this wonderful hobby. But little by little, I felt that new radio itch: The need for some new challenge. The answer came in the form of a magazine article about satellites.
Yes! That was it. I would work the world through the ham sats! However, my loving and supportive XYL Ruthie, K4KLQ, while always sympathetic to my sometimes-eccentric endeavors, said she was behind me all the way but with one caveat. As long as I didn’t spend any money, I could go for it. With possible inflation on the horizon, we needed to be tight-fisted.
Was I discouraged? No, not at all. I could happily forgo the new UHF/VHF SDR transceiver I had been ogling and that monster 2-meter / 70-centimeter Yagi array with computer-controlled az/el (azimuth and elevation) rotators and investigate what I could do with what I had on hand. After all, wasn’t I the minimalist guy
