"Ralph A. Schmid, DK5RAS" wrote in message
...
"Jeff" wrote:

Pardon my skepticism but by the time any satellite signal reaches
earth you're talking signals in the nanowatt range. Thats the reason why
you need a beam and preamp, or a dish with a LNA. And you want
us to believe a consumer grade RS handheld can do this feat with
just a rubber duck??????? Come on.

It is definetely possible, BTDT. Why should there any difference to my
satellite handheld phone, which also works just with some flimsy
antenna?!

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Years ago I bought a Drake TR 270 to do amateur sat. work.
(2mtr. uplink and 440 downlink) when I figured out that I was going
to have to get for an antenna and possibly a dual rotor setup to track
the sat. I dropped the idea. I think at that time you needed a beam
with about 12db of gain for it to work reliably. That translates into
about a 14-15 element dual polarized beam. That is one big antenna.
Plus any mil-sat equipment Ive ever seen invariably use the little
mini dish's to use in conjunction with it. Thats where I got the idea.
I guess things have changed. I know the signals that come down
from space are extremely low power,, with the possible exception
to ISS, I think they may be beaming their signals to earth and running
at a higher power so people can pick them up easily. A geo-synchronous
sat. at 25,000 miles out running on 40-50 watts isnt much power.
The OP gave me some freqs. to try on my VR 5K and Im going to
give it a shot and see what I come up with.. I guess I had a case of
"open mouth and insert foot"

J