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Listening to Satellites

Tune in to space with a homemade yagi antenna.

BY DIANA ENG

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Photography by Diana Eng

One of my favorite things to do is talk with other ham radio operators through satellites or the International Space Station (ISS). To do this, I stand on a rooftop and tune a handheld multiband radio while tracing the orbit of a satellite or the ISS with my homemade yagi antenna.

Orbiting satellites such as SO-50 act as repeaters, relaying signals from low-power transceivers like mine back to hams elsewhere on the planet. So if you know ...

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