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I've had an interest in amateur packet radio for a long time, specifically working amateur packet radio satellites, and specifically the ISS digipeater. In my journey through to the infinitely interesting subject of amateur packet radio I came across two pieces of software; Predict and Direwolf.

Predict allows for automatic tracking and antenna steering for a variety of satellites, the list of which you can easily update. I'm less concerned with Predict and more concerned with the latter, Direwolf.

Direwolf uses a normal sound card as a TNC, which is a godsend for people who do not want to purchase a specialized and expensive TNC. It uses the FX.25 protocol, backward compatible with AX.25, as used by many amateur packet radio satellites and stations.

So I was wondering, can you combine Predict and Direwolf to work amateur packet radio satellites, specifically the ISS amateur packet radio digipeater? If so how?

Steve Mucci
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As far as I know, Direwolf is just a sound card implementation of APRS, and does not have any features specifically for or against use with satellites or ISS.

Tracking isn't strictly necessary but probably very helpful for this purpose. Probably if you used Predict to aim your antenna and just let Direwolf do its thing, you could work with Amateur packet satellites. However, you should be able to receive one or two packets with a correctly aimed HT dipole antenna, and a correctly aimed moxon may be able to get the whole pass, both without any tracking software or aiming adjustments during the pass.

It is likely that some hardware in orbit doesn't support FX.25 (and some does), but as FX.25 is backwards compatible with AX.25, things that don't support it just won't notice or transmit the FEC parts.

user10489
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