"Jerry Martes" wrote in message
news:%dsZi.2897$CI1.289@trnddc03...
Although I disagree with your premise about "great distance and a few
hundred miles", I must admit that I lack knowledge of the satellites other
than the few NOAA satellites. The NOAA satellites are about 4 time more
distant at the horizon than overhead. That results about 12 dB less
signal at the low elevation angle. The 12 dB is fairly easy to put back
in the plot.
The guys at NASA/NOAA did an excellent job of tailoring the NOAA
satellite pattern shape so it is close to equal over the entire pass.
I'd have expected the "OSCAR" guys to have done the same and shaped their
satellite antenna beams to be essentially equal level over the angle at
which the Earth intercepts the satellite beam.
I'd like to know more about a 2Meter beacon satellite. Can you point me
to a site where I can learn about 2Meter beacon satellites? I have a


Jerry you can find information on the ham sats at www.amsat.org.

I guess the great distances I was thinking about was from about 200 miles to
around 1000 or so. As you said that is getting close to 10 to 12 db
differant. In one way that is not really that much differance in signal,
but the types of antennas we have been talking about would have from 0 db to
about 6 db of gain. Most would have just one or two db worth of differance
in the best direction.