Good thought, David. I do have the settings FCD Centre Frequency set for 145945. But I also have the auto tune range limited to 34599-44854 kHz which should only let the auto tune catch approximately 145931 to 145941 kHz. So it should not be (nor do I observer it to) tuning any of the transponder portion. It is always locked on the beacon as identified by the hump and beep "spikes" as I watch it. I do not hear FMing on the beacon. It sounds like it should, but it is covered by a stronger SSB signal, basically. And it appears that the combined doppler shift of the beacon and the signal make them move across each other such that the QSO eventually passes by but then another can come up and do the same. Overloading the FCD maybe? I do have a preamp on, maybe I'll try it tonight without the preamp. The reason I use the preamp is that when I initially set up, I could not get a solid spectrograph (it blinked on and off) unless I had the preamp on. I believe that was related to the version of Dashboard I had at that time as observed by a friend who had seen the same thing when he just got his FCD Pro + the other day, but it disappeared when he upgraded his Dashboard. Preamp is off now, I will see what happens this morning and tonight.

73
Jerry
N0JY

On 12/6/2013 2:47 AM, g0...@aol.com wrote:

That's an interesting observation Jerry.   Not something we saw during 
commissioning the satellite.
A possible cause would be image response of the dongle. Do you have the 'zero frequency' somewhere between the beacon and the transponder passband? e.g. 145.945 or off to one side e.g. 145.920?

Other possibility is a large signal in the transponder passband causing the 
beacon to FM.    Is the modulation 'FM' or does it decode as SSB?
Thanks David G0MRF


-----Original Message-----
From: n0jy <n...@n0jy.org>
To: AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb@amsat.org>
Sent: Fri, 6 Dec 2013 4:40
Subject: [amsat-bb] AO-73 QSOs on the beacon?


During the eclipse passes while copying telemetry with my Funcube Dongle
Pro + I am hearing SSB QSOs on the beacon frequency.
They usually "walk" across it but what puzzles me is that the website
info indicates that the transponder passband is well away from the
beacon frequency.
Am I experiencing some weird stuff with my Dongle or is it possible for
stations to work on an uplink that puts their downlink on the beacon
frequency?

Thanks,
Jerry
N0JY
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