so ive been meaning to get into LEO satellite work for probably two years now and last weekend i finally just went outside and tried it. used a cheap arrow antenna, my ft-817 for the uplink and a separate vx-8dr for the downlink monitoring. pass was about 8 minutes overhead, az/el from heavens-above which i know isnt the fastest but it was what i had running on my phone.

managed to hear myself in the transponder maybe twice and i think i made one actual contact but im honestly not sure if the other station got my callsign. the doppler shift thing is way more aggressive than i expected, like i knew it would be a thing but actually chasing it manually while trying to hold the yagi and talk was kind of a mess. how do people manage all that without like three hands. do most people just use computer tracking and automate the rig tuning or are there guys who really do it all by hand every pass.

also the linear transponder on FO-29 - is it inverting, meaning i tune up on uplink and the downlink goes down? i think i had that right but not 100% sure and it definitely would explain some of the confusion i was having.

yeah FO-29 is inverting, USB up and LSB down is the usual way to think about it, so if you tune your uplink higher the downlink pitch drops. once that clicks it becomes kind of second nature but the first few passes are definitely chaotic. dont feel bad about the three hands problem, everybody goes through that phase. i used to rubber band my phone to the antenna handle which sounds ridiculous but it worked.

for doppler a lot of guys use satpc32 or gpredict with a rig control cable and just let it handle the correction automatically, but honestly for low passes under maybe 20 degrees elevation you barely need to chase it that aggressively. the real tracking issue is more az/el than frequency if youre doing it handheld. you get a feel for it after 10 or 15 passes and it stops feeling so frantic. stick with it, satellite ops is genuinely one of the more fun parts of the hobby once it clicks.

gpredict is free and does rig control if you want to automate the doppler correction, hooks into hamlib so it works with the 817. that said i still do most of my passes by ear, just nudge the dial every 30 seconds or so and its usually close enough for a linear transponder. the bigger issue ive found is people not knowing where to listen on their downlink before they transmit, you gotta find your own signal first or youre just spraying RF and hoping.