Had fun trying to work some ham satelites. Listened to the beacon of RS-15, the beacon of RS-13, and caught RS-15 again in another orbit (it takes RS-15 2 hours to orbit the Earth). I listened on 10 meters, and during the latter two I keyed on the 2 meter uplink band. Didn't hear anything either time - I need to find something better than a vertical car-mount antenna for transmitting. Perhaps tomorrow I will build a loop skywire. I already have a 2 meter beam but that is directional, of course, and with 15 minute passes it will be a big pain to keep the beam oriented. My recieving antenna sucks too. It was a 20 meter dipole that I was using to receive 10 meters, and it didn't work very well. The beacons were so weak on my receiver that they were not easy to hear. I didn't hear any QSO's on the satelites, although I did seem to hear a bit of CW occasionally. With better antennas and perhaps a 50 watt amplifier on the 2 meter transmitter, I should be set up to do some real contacts over a satelite. I'm glad that the uplink is on 2 meters, because while my 2 meter rig has a lot less output power, I'm not sure my technician plus class license allows operation on some of the frequencies the satelites use. I will also need to brush up on my CW as I haven't used it forever (since I discovered IRC :)).

If you're into satelites or want to get into them, check out heavens-above. This site is a very convenient method of getting the times of the next satelite passes.