Tonight AAA was holding their annual Urban Starfest in Central Park on the Sheep Meadow. I decided to take advantage of the open space and went up there with my radio and an Elk Antennas log periodic 2m/70cm antenna to try and hear transmissions from ISS and FITSAT-1.
I started out on the hill in the SE corner of the Meadow since there weren't many people there and most of the satellite passes and flares would be in the NW. I heard nothing on the first ISS pass. About sundown a parkie came by to tell me that part of the lawn was closed to I moved down to where AAA had all their scopes strung out in a straight line.
While heading over I saw Peter had just arrived with his Teleport so W went over to say hello and ended up spending the night with him. He also had his Takahashi binocular set up on the tripod so I drove them while he managed the telescope.
I tried for three more satellite passes but didn't hear anything on any of them. I am sweeping the area of the sky where I think the satellite will be and am listening on all the Dopler shift frequencies around the satellite's transmit frequency.
I saw a flare from one of the experimental predictions listed on CalSky. It was a very long flare without the quick rise and falloff in brightness associated with an Iridium flare.
The Starfest was well attended by both people with telescopes and those without.
