I was looking at the most inexpensive way to listen to shields-1. I notice a whole lot of good reports with signal in the -70dBm range from people using inexpensive turnstiles or other omnidirectional antennas. With a vertically polarized whip antenna here in Virginia I am seeing no higher than -120dBm on various passes (whip antenna going into a boatanchor R-1283 receiver with good calibration). Is the improvement with the properly polarized turnstile or quadrifilar that much better? Or am I instead just testing on passes that are too low to the horizon?
I am familiar with the 1200bps FSK which requires relatively low S/N to get good data… just how much worse is Mode U format? How much signal should I need to expect before I can get solid copy?
Guys like @Jim look like they are getting beautiful observations… Jim, what exactly is your receiver setup? You say you have a SAW filter and preamp in front of the SDA… what are they? Are you able to consistently receive whenever it’s over the radio horizon?
As you can tell, I don’t know much about satellites. I am just an HF guy who got very curious.