[HamSat] Newbie seeks help with RS-15

[Andrew Roos]

Hi all,

I'm located in Cape Town, South Africa and have been an amateur for 2 years
now, mostly HF CW, completely new to amateur satellites. After reading
"working the easy sats" on the Amsat home page I decided to give it a go. I
bought a second hand 2m multimode (Yaesu FT480R, 10W output) and built
crossed-dipole antennas for 2m and 10m. My HF rig is a Kenwood TS680S.

I was going to try to work RS12/13 but I believe it is now u/s. So I decided
to try RS-15. Got the latest orbital elements from Amsat, fed them into
WinOrbit, and listened for the beacon on 29.352 MHz +/- doppler. Nothing
heard. I figured the problem might be the beacon not working when the
satellite isn't in sunlight, so I waited for a sunlit pass and... still
nothing.

So my questions to you good folks are:

1. Is my setup sufficient to hear RS-15? I'm using a 10m crossed-dipole
antenna, RH circular polarised, mounted 2m above a metal roof which may act
as a reflector, feeding my Kenwood TS680S through about 10m of RG58. No
masthead preamp.

2. Should I be able to work the satellite on CW with 10W through a 2m
crossed-dipole, also RH circular?

3. The beacon isn't turned off over darkest Africa is it?

4. What am I doing wrong?

Many thanks and 73,
Andrew ZS1AN