so i've been wanting to do satellite stuff for a while and last week i actually sat down and did it. got gpredict running, had my ft-817 out, printed the frequencies for AO-73 beforehand. the pass was like 8 minutes, max elevation something like 34 degrees which seemed decent.

here's the thing though -- i knew doppler correction was a thing but i didn't really appreciate how fast you have to be tuning. like i was hunting around the linear transponder passband trying to find my own signal coming back down and by the time i thought i heard something close to it the frequency had already shifted enough that i lost it again. i never actually confirmed a qso, heard a few other guys working each other fine which was frustrating.

im using a pair of arrow antennas actually just the one dual band arrow, pointing manually. so my question is basically -- do people just get good at the doppler tuning through practice or is there a smarter way to do this without going full computer controlled radio. i dont really want to rig up CAT control just for occasional satellite work but maybe thats the only real answer

yeah the doppler on the linear birds is the thing that gets everyone at first. the trick i use is to just park the uplink a bit above center passband at AOS and work it down slowly throughout the pass, and then the downlink you tune to find yourself. you kind of get a feel for the rate after a few passes. AO-73 in inverting mode means as you tune up on 70cm uplink your downlink on 2m actually goes down so that throws people off too if they haven't intenalized that yet.

honestly i resisted CAT control for ages and then finally set it up with gpredict and an interface cable and it's just... so much nicer. you can actually focus on the actual operating instead of chasing your own tail the whole pass. still do it manually sometimes just to stay sharp but for actually making contacts the automation is worth it

the inverting transponder thing tripped me up for like 3 passes before it clicked. also are you accounting for the fact that you need to hear yourself before you can work anyone -- some people jump straight to calling CQ and they havent even confirmed their signal is getting through the bird yet. wasted a lot of my early passes doing exactly that lol