I realize this is probably not what you want to read from the person who designing hardware specifically for the purpose of operating satellites, but I just made my first two Satellite QSOs during the 23:40UTC ISS pass over the South West US today!

My first ever satellite QSO, with WA6ARA DM15:

You can hear me get a little flustered when I actually hear my own voice coming back from the ISS, kinda made my own callsign evaporate right out of my head. Several “Uhh”s followed, but I managed to make the QSO stick.

My second QSO, later in the same pass, with KC7MG DM42. I sounded a little less like an idiot on this one. 🙂

This audio was recorded directly by SOAR, doppler compensation done automatically by SOAR, sky tracking on SOAR’s screen. This entire operation was exactly how I envisioned SOAR to operate.

I’m kinda ridiculously happy about this QSO. 🙂

The whole pass:

I got started a bit late on this pass, was still assembling the antenna when it started. I got the antenna pointed when it was about 16 degree above the horizon, which is why it starts out with such a strong signal.

Update

Patrick and I attempted the first SOAR to SOAR contact on the 04:10UTC ISS pass tonight, and the pass was … well, let me just apologize for some salty language in the below recording.

I can hear Patrick calling me at about 6:40 and 7:10 in the recording. But there were so many people trying to get in that my little 2W just wasn’t cutting it.

I was doing a live-stream to Twitter during this pass too so you hear me talking to that audience a bit too. The above audio recording started at about 3:45 into the Twitter live stream, if you want to view both together.

Apparently, there’s some hideous noise on UHF in my neighborhood. If you don’t want to listen to me marveling at that, I suggest you fast-forward to about 2:30 into this audio clip above. I faded down the noise at the beginning and end of the recording.