Several milestones were reached at the same time when Qatar’s OSCAR-100 (QO-100) was placed into geosynchronous orbit. First it is the 100th orbiting amateur radio satellite. Second, it is the first for Qatar. Third, it is the first geosynchronous amateur radio satellite.

The bad news is for those of us in North America is that we are outside the footprint of the satellite, which was positioned to service Asia, Europe and Africa (I don’t know that there would have been an orbital slot available in this part of the world).

But we can listen to what is going on, including the 400 bps data downlink (which hasn’t been heard since AO-40 days in 1999) at 10489.800 MHz.  One of the ground stations has a SDR receiver setup online.  The link is below. Please note that when too many users are online you won’t be able to start the sound, but the waterfall is still running.

Here a link to an online SDR that can be used to listen to AO-100 remotely: https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/

Screen cap of Remote SDR tuned to QO-100

Here is an audio recording of G0API calling CQ on QO-100.  John is using 1.2 watts output to a 90 cm dish (3 feet in diameter).