To catch a satellite

I have started to play around with packet radio (again). The last time I messed around with this was in college. During that time, I used a dedicated terminal node controller called a PK-88, hooked to an ancient VT100 data terminal.

We're a little more advanced today.

Digital apps like MixW and DigiPan will modulate the outbound data via the speaker jacks, and demodulate the incoming data via the microphone jack. No dedicated TNC required!

A reason why I wanted to get into packet again is that many of the satellites flying around the planet are fitted with APRS nodes, and should be easy to pick up on their dedicated packet frequency... when they fly over me. That's the trick, and that's what Orbitron is good for. It's a freeware app that tracks (and more importantly, PREDICTS) the location of APRS satellites near your lat/long location, and gives you a date/time to start checking for the fly-by.

Here is a screenshot:

So, using this as an example, I should start checking for the UARS satellite tonight around 9:56pm. I happen to know its packet TX/RX frequencies are both 145 MHz, so I'll be monitoring with MixW around that time!