{"id":858,"date":"2016-01-07T01:08:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T01:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/?p=858"},"modified":"2016-01-19T07:52:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T07:52:48","slug":"workin-the-birds-so-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/?p=858","title":{"rendered":"Workin&#8217; The Birds: SO-50"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For a change of pace, I thought that I would try making contacts through <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saudi-OSCAR_50\">SO-50<\/a>. SO-50 is another FM repeater satellite and until the commissioning of Fox-1 as AO-85 the only FM repeater still operational.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike AO-85, the uplink for SO-50 is 2M and the downlink is 70cm. Here is my <a href=\"http:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/resources\/so-50-programming.csv\">channel configuration<\/a> that I&#8217;m using for my baofeng. Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve learned since my <a href=\"http:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/?p=846\">last attempt.<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open the squelch:\n<ul>I was debating whether or not I would leave the squelch open in my last post. I&#8217;ve deciding now that I will.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li id=\"antenna\">Mount the antenna on a tripod:\n<ul>I&#8217;d seen about as many people with mounts as just aiming the antenna by hand. Tracking a satellite is hard, let alone managing two radios, a recorder, a time piece, directions &#8230;. I could go on.<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>I&#8217;ll be mounting mine on a camera tripod from now on. I found a piece of aluminum square stock, then I drilled a 5\/8&#8243; hole through it and then a drilled and tapped a 1\/4-20&#8243; through the side. Finally, I cut it off (about 2&#8243; long) and drilled and tapped a 1\/4-20 hole in the bottom. I find that I need a small piece of flat stock about 3 1\/2&#8243; long to put between the tripod and aluminum block. Clear as mud right?<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/2016-01-06_18-51-11_328.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-862\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-862\" src=\"http:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/2016-01-06_18-51-11_328-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"2016-01-06_18-51-11_328\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/2016-01-06_18-51-11_328-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/2016-01-06_18-51-11_328-768x574.jpg 768w, https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/2016-01-06_18-51-11_328-1024x765.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>I cut a piece of 1\/2&#8243; copper pipe (that conveniently fits up the south end of a north bound arrow antenna). Insert it in the south end, then slide through the 5\/8&#8243; hole and tighten the thumbscrew to keep it in place. When I do a day pass and finish up a few other things, I&#8217;ll dedicate a post to the subject, with pretty high quality pictures.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>I seriously need a way to orient angles\n<ul>Like, I set of protractors or something. Its very frustrating trying to track a satellite with no clue where the angles are.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Higher qualities recordings are only good if they&#8217;re complete:\n<ul>Oops. I noticed that my last recording wasn&#8217;t all that high quality so I tried to improve it. It worked, but I alo managed to get skips in the recording. I guess my droid 2 is getting old. Let&#8217;s see if I can&#8217;t find a decent dedicated recorder somewhere in addition to those protractors.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Relax, it&#8217;s late night pass and there&#8217;s only a few people on:\n<ul>No, seriously. I did an 11pm CDT pass and there were only 3 people trying to trade. Chill people. I said they were going fast and furious but for a late night pass it didn&#8217;t hold true.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Anyway, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve learned from my last two passes. Also, congrats to this young lady on her <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/13COZU957IU\">first contact<\/a>. I also made my first contact last night, and yes, I was pumped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a change of pace, I thought that I would try making contacts through SO-50. SO-50 is another FM repeater satellite and until the commissioning of Fox-1 as AO-85 the only FM repeater still operational. Unlike AO-85, the uplink for SO-50 is 2M and the downlink is 70cm. Here is my channel configuration that I&#8217;m&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more navbutton\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/?p=858\">Read More<i class=\"fa fa-angle-double-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108,121],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soliloquyforthefallen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}