I recently bought an Icom IC-910H. It was in extremely good condition and came with a dealer warranty. I just had to buy it. For SSB/Digi on SAT I only had my FT-817 and FT-818 and I wanted something with better internal filters and more power. Also, FT-817 and FT-818 can't do doppler correction while transmitting. During TX the 817/818's CAT is not responsive so I wanted something else.

In this post I explain what you need to do with an IC-910 for FT4 via SAT.

Even though I have been using cloudlog to log my SAT QSOs for a long time, I would like to explain here how to log a QSO in Log4OM so that it also works as a SAT QSO in LOTW, eQSL and paper QSL (label).

If we entered a callsign we click to "My".

Then we chose Satellite in the drop-down menu unter "Propagation". We also need to check the SATELLITE MODE box.

Now we fill out these fields and we see "RS-44" on left and can chose VU.

Without the correct SAT Name and Propagation mode set to Satellite it is not possible to get a LOTW cfm. All those values need to be correct.

How to add other SATs?

In the current version 2.23.0.0 the most popular LEO SAT RS-44 is missing, but this is not a problem. Log4OM simply uses a CSV file as database. We can edit this file to fit the LOTW name list. This step is important. If you add an own name, LOTW will never get a match and the QSO will still be unfonfirmed. All missing and new SATs can be added.

The file "satellites.csv" can be found under C:\Users\[YOURNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Log4OM2:

I just added this line:

Just comment if you have any questions regarding Log4OM and Satellite QSOs.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren brought joy to many radio amateurs in recent weeks when he contacted them directly from the space station via the ISS repeater, giving some a QSO with NA1SS. In the past three to four years, there were mostly no connections with the crews outside of school contacts. On Friday 22 July, NA1SS was heard over Europe in the evening, allowing European radio amateurs to make a QSO. The following day, Joshua, DL3JOP, was able to make a QSO with NA1SS at 18:08 UTC. Motivated by this, John, DK9JC, also set off with his portable equipment to hear his call confirmed by Kjell on the next overflight 1.5 h later (21:45 h local). Anyone who also wants to try their luck should have a 2 m and 70 cm directional antenna and a full duplex transceiver system. The repeater's frequencies and CTCSS can be found on the ARISS website.

I recently bought an FT-818 to accompany my FT-817 to work portably on linear satellites. In this article I will show you how to set up Gpredict properly.

At home I use Gpredict for doppler correction under Windows. Gpredict is free software, but requires Hamlib/rigctl(d) for cat control. Hamlib is not self-explanatory because it is not a ready-made software. You have to create the individual parameters yourself. The necessary information can be found in Hamlib's Gitlab.

So you have to create a command for each transceiver. Since I use 2 transceivers for full-duplex, I have to create 2 commands.

The most important thing is to find out the ID of your transceiver. The list can be found here: https://github.com/Hamlib/Hamlib/wiki/Supported-Radios

For me it is ID 1020 for Yaesu FT-817 and 1041 for Yaesu FT-818.

FT-817 and FT-818 have slight differences in the CAT commands. Therefore there are 2 profiles. (This is also the reason why the current version of SatPC32 currently does not work with the FT-818. Only the FT-817 is supported there.)