[SFDXA] Oscar 100 - first ham sat in geostationary orbit

[Bill Dzurilla]

Just returned from Slovakia, where the big new thing in ham radio is Oscar 100, the first ham satellite in geostationary orbit, which means you can work from Brazil to Thailand with a few watts of power and a small, stationary dish antenna. Unfortunately, although the footprint is huge, the entire USA is outside the footprint. You can ragchew all day with no signal drop, arguably even too easy to work DX. The uplink is on the 2.4ghz band and the downlink is at 10.4ghz. The transponder has room for both narrow and wideband modes, with a band plan for SSB, CW, digital modes, fast scan TV, FM, etc. You can receive the narrowband transponder online at https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/ (cw at the bottom, digital in the middle, SSB at the top). More info at https://amsat-dl.org/p4-a-nb-transponder-bandplan-and-operating-guidelines/.73,Bill NZ5N