QO-100 in the catalogue: the geostationary transponder through a dish you do not own

The amateur transponder on Es'hail-2 hangs over Africa and is heard around the clock from Brazil to Thailand. ShackDeck now lists its beacons and the SSB, CW, FT8 and SSTV segments, tunes receivers with a dish on the satellite, and handles the converter arithmetic for you.

Qatar-OSCAR 100 is the first amateur transponder on a geostationary satellite: no passes, no Doppler to speak of, the same spot in the sky all day. The catch is the frequency, 10.49 GHz, which no ordinary receiver covers. A few public receivers do, through a dish and a downconverter, and that is what ShackDeck uses.

The new QO-100 rubric in the station catalogue has the PSK beacon on 10489.750 MHz, the lower and upper CW beacons that mark the transponder's edges, the SSB segment, the CW segment, the FT8 frequency, the SSTV frequency and the emergency frequency. A receiver with a dish is bound to each, the French F6BIR among them.

The converter arithmetic is taken care of: such a receiver reports its frequency offset, the program keeps the real frequency on the dial and translates it for the receiver underneath, so you tune 10489.700 and hear 10489.700. In the logbook the band is 3 cm, and a decoded FT8 station from the satellite fills the log form with the band, the frequency and the mode.

The amateur rubric got a matching line, so the satellite is one click away from the other amateur bands as well.