Chuck with the antenna rotator on the antenna stand	Mark and John putting on the 2 meter antenna	Chuck with the antenna cable box on the tailgate
Ed and John assembling antenna (CW)	Ed connecting cable to antenna with Mark (CW)	Aligning the two antennas in the same direction
Dave preparing to add another tube section to an HF antenna	The tube section is ready to be elevated up	Jon helping to guy the tower as it goes up
The HF tower is slowing moving up	Long line of HF antennas (CW)	Chuck adds the CARA SAT sign to our tent
Joseph Herr Ho Co Fire Chief and Dave	Dennis Schrader, MD Director of Homeland Security, talking to Dave	Guy Guzzone, Ho Co Council Chariman from District 3, and his wife Pam
Rick at the operating table with Art	Inside the air conditioned tent	Inside the air conditioned tent
Air conditioned tent with power generator (CW)	Information tent and the GOTA station	Ed and Bernie at the Info tent (CW)
Elaine taking photos at dusk	Carasat antenna and tent (CW)	John operating cw (CW)
Ed watching Nova tracking (CW)	Art and John operating (CW)	Art and John operating (CW)
Gerry, Art and John (CW)	Mark, Art and Ed (CW)	The upper end of the Satellite Antenna
In the tent when the first contact was made Elaine and Mark	In the tent when the first contact was made Todd	In the tent when the first contact was made Mark and Gerry
In the tent when the first contact was made Rick	Sunday breakfast Bob cooking bacon	Sunday breakfast Art wisking the eggs and Bob's cooked sausage below
Sunday breakfast Art and Bob making scrambled eggs	Sunday breakfast Bob scrambling the eggs	The food tent (CW)
Operating station - Yaesu FT-847 and Icom 910H (for S-band down from Echo), laptop running Uni Trac	Operating table LCD monitor and laptop on right running Nova tracking program	Operating table clipboard with list of passes and fan
Table with documents box	Boxes with misc. stuff	Takedown - John and Chuck taking down the antennas
Takedown - Jon with stuff on the ground to be carted away	Takedown - antenna stand compressed and ready to go	Maurice KA3EJJ on the VHF/UHF station (CW)
Inside the mobile VHF/UHF station	Inside the mobile VHF/UHF station	Dave W3DIO in the VHF/UHF station (CW)

Report by Ed N2EC

             Once again we are attempting to make satellite contacts with amateur radio satellites that are in low earth orbit (LEO). The LEO satellites make a pass during a relatively short period on time on the order of about 12 minutes.

             We set up the Cara Satellite station shortly after 2 pm by moving the equipment from John’s QTH to the Field Day site at Triadelphia Ridge Elementary School, 13400 Triadelphia Road at the intersection of Folly Quarter and Triadelphia Road. The early team was John, Mark, Ed and Chuck West (KS3M). We used a small popup tent (later to be used as the Information tent) to provide some shade. Art arrived at about 4:30 pm and set up his screened tent into which all the equipment was transferred. [NOTE:  possibly further activities Friday afternoon/evening will be added here.]

            On Saturday morning the equipment was tested out. At 9:28 am we tried AO-7 and at 10:14 am FO-29, both with no luck. However, at the 10:45 am pass of Hamsat we contacted N1HOQ using John’s call. Then during the ECHO pass at 11:09 am we contacted Robin VE3FRH in Canada also using John’s call. Robin is the past president of Amsat NA. For Field Day ECHO is using an S-band downlink which requires a special antenna to receive the signal. See the photo near the end in the Takedown  section where Art’s S-band receiver antenna is mounted at the end of the beam in Image 3233 with its “V-shaped” back reflector.

             When Field Day started at 2 pm Hamsat was still coming over, but it was a very low pass and thus we did not hear anything. Other satellites that we tried were SaudiSat (SO-50) at 3:27 pm, AO-27 at 5:07 pm, SO-50 at 5:18 pm, AO-7 at 6:31 pm and AO-27 at 6:48 pm, but we never heard ourselves.

             Finally at 8:39 pm on ECHO we made our first successful Field Day contact with Robin VE3FRH using our Field Day call sign of W3AO. This was so exciting that I took photos of everyone in the tent at the time except Art (the operator) and me. Note that Rick and his wife Elaine were in the tent at the time and Rick is the current President of Amsat NA.

             For the Hamsat pass at 9:40 pm Mark requested a CW operator from the main tent. Carl came over and was able to make the cw contact at 9:44 pm that gave us  two points. The next Hamsat pass at 11:17 pm we made a voice contact. There was a voice pile up so Pete tried to get in with a cw contact, but we did not receive any reply. Then at 12:10 am John and Mark were able to make a contact on SaudiSat. Later in the morning we made two more contacts on ECHO at 10:23 am and at 10:30 am and our final contact was at 11:03 am on FO-29. The last effective pass for the day was Hamsat at 12:39 pm and after not making any additional contact we then proceed to take down the station.  A list of our contacts is in the table below.

 Additional 100 Bonus Points for Satellite Station Contact.  

The following people were seen at the Satellite tent this year and helped out.

Art N3OY
Becky  KB3MAU
Bernie K3BAZ
Bob KC3VO
Carl K3RV
Chuck KS3M
Chuck K3CDR
Dave W8AJR
Dave N3OYF
Doug AA3S
Ed N2EC
Gerry WA1SHD
John W3GJN
Jon KF3O
Larry W0NQW
Mark KB3GJE
Pete K3IN
Rick W2GPS
Elaine N3HMW
Todd WB2ZAB