During a school contact, the ISS spends more than 70% of the pass time below 30 degrees where beams are needed for good quality contacts. But in the past, this has needed a full sized OSCAR class antenna with AZ/EL rotators, a mast and a tracking system.
Here we are poroposing that the same objectives might be met with a simpler approach that can eliminate the bulk of this complexity and reduce the hardware required to make it possible to pack everything that will be needed by a school into s single suitcase sized Go-Kit.
To see if this is practical, we propose a test that skilled aorrow-type portable satelilte oeprators can conduct to help us determine if this idea is viable. Please see the GO-kit proposal paper (rev d).
The drawing above is drawn to actual relative scale and makes it easy to see the value of having beams on the horizon for most of the pass. This concept is to see if two fixed portable arrow-type antennas can be situated to see the AOS and LOS horizons without the need for the complexity and size of an AZ/EL array.
Bob Bruninga, WB4APR