This has ushered amateur radio into the realm of geostationary satellites. It works in the S-band/X-band microwave bands. All these were efforts of AMSAT-DL (Germany) in association with AMSAT-NA.Ĭurrently, radio amateurs also have access to a phase-4 transponder on a Geostationary satellite Es’hail-2 (QO-100) parked over the equator and placed over Africa at 25.9° East longitude to provide simultaneous coverage across entire Africa, Europe, and large parts of Asia. The next phase-3 satellite P3E is awaiting launch at this time. It was a heavy advanced satellite with an apogee of 59258 Km but unfortunately, it failed in the year 2003. In the year 2000, the P3D OSCAR-40 was launched. OSCAR-13 did indeed serve us well and was operational till 1996. OSCAR-9 suffered a launch failure while OSCAR-10 was a partial success. Typically the apogee was planned to be around 36000 Km with the perigee around 2500-4000 Km. They were meant to operate in a highly elliptical orbit with a high apogee to perigee ratio. For instance, OSCAR-9, 10, and 13 were phase-3 satellite originally designated as P3A, P3B, and P3C respectively. There have been a few exceptions to the LEO satellites for amateurs. I have been actively working through amateur satellites ever since the early days of OSCAR-6 and OSCAR-7 while I was in engineering college…

Most earth satellites for amateur radio have been placed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with some of them being in sun-synchronous polar orbits.

Since the early 1970s, serious efforts were made to put amateur radio on the satellite map. Radio amateurs were quick to start using satellites for communication. An understanding of Earth Satellite Orbits is crucial to optimizing the use of communication satellite resources.

Satellites have been there enhancing radio communication for several decades.

Orbitron satellite dish receiver