[drmpeg]

I used the equipment for the same reason, to communicate through the Oscar 10 and 13 satellites at home. Oscar 10 was launched in 1983. At that time, I was living in an apartment. I strung up some smaller yagis on the balcony that fortunately faced towards the southwest. I was able to use some, but not all passes of the satellite.

I also used the equipment for terrestrial communications. When I started renting a house, I put up a large yagi for 2-meters. With SSB, you can make contacts out to about 300-400 miles. Enough for contacts between Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles area.

I also made much longer distance contacts with that station with special propagation modes. Meteor bounce, sporadic-E and trans-Pacific (Hawaii) ducting (about 2400 miles).

For the 70cm equipment, I participated in VHF/UHF contests with multioperator groups. This is where we'd go to mountain tops to operate. I was lucky enough to operate from Mt. Pinos a couple of times before ham radio was banned from there. Mt. Pinos is a 8847 ft. mountain at the southern end of the central valley and by far the best location for VHF/UHF operating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinos

Of course, this was in the 80's and 90's. Nowadays, weak signal VHF/UHF may not be very active where you live.

[aspenmayer]

> For the 70cm equipment, I participated in VHF/UHF contests with multioperator groups.

Why?

This is a genuine question! I know I am genuinely uninteresting because I don’t know why I would do this if there wasn’t already a built-in audience. This seems adjacent to shouting into the void if one doesn’t already know that there are listeners/receivers. Why does anyone do this at all?

[drmpeg]

It's an organized event, just like Field Day. The most popular one is in June, since sporadic-E propagation on 50 MHz is available.

https://www.arrl.org/june-vhf

To be honest, I've pretty much phased out on conventional ham radio. The last time I was out in the field was 2010. These days all my ham radio activity is for SDR (Software Defined Radio) development testing. Here's my Github.

https://github.com/drmpeg

And here's a demo video of my open source ATSC 3.0 transmitter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLn5L-k4EPA

[aspenmayer]

Thank you for your response.

I am not active much on GH, but mine is:

https://github.com/aspenmayer

> And here's a demo video of my open source ATSC 3.0 transmitter.

Wasn’t yet following you on Twitter, but was already subbed on YT. I see you, but I don’t recognize you. I will review my history to appreciate further your contribution(s) to my present state.

I am going to DEF CON. I hope to see you there, but if not this year, perhaps sometime soon irl or online.

To circle back, how did this happen:

> > They found out that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station

Specifically, how did they know

> that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station

?

Are there people fox hunting recreationally, all the time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_findin...