This weekend, thousands of curious people descended on Eastnor Castle Deer Park in Herefordshire for EMF Camp 2026 — the Electromagnetic Field event that brings together geeks, makers, and technologists for four days of talks, workshops, and experimentation. And right in the middle of it all, flying the flag for amateur radio, were three brilliant organisations: AMSAT-UK, the British Amateur Television Club (BATC), and the UK Microwave Group (UKuG).

Their joint village at EMF Camp was doing something that I think deserves a lot more attention in the Foundation licence community: showing that talking to, and through, satellites is not some exotic pursuit reserved for radio engineers with rooftop antenna farms. It’s something any licensed amateur can work towards, often with surprisingly modest kit.

What Was Happening at EMF Camp?

The AMSAT-UK, BATC, and UKuG village (operating on the special event callsign GB26EMF) was set up to demonstrate live satellite ground stations, amateur television, and microwave operating techniques throughout the weekend. The headline act, for many visitors, was making contacts and watching digital amateur television (DATV) through the QO-100 satellite — a geostationary transponder sitting 36,000 km above the equator that any licensed UK amateur can use, right now, from their garden.

There were also talks covering topics like building your own satellite ground station, LoRa from space, and even an ambitious session titled “An Internet for the Solar System.” It’s exactly the kind of thing that reminds you why you wanted to get into this hobby in the first place.

What Is QO-100, and Why Should You Care?

QO-100 (also known as Es’hail-2) is a communications satellite operated jointly with amateur radio transponders. Unlike the old-school Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites that zip overhead in a few minutes and require you to track them with a moving antenna, QO-100 is geostationary. It sits in a fixed position over the equator, visible from the UK at all times. Point your dish at it once, and it stays there.

The narrowband transponder on QO-100 accepts uplinks in the 2.4 GHz band and sends the downlink back on 10 GHz. Here’s the good news for Foundation holders: the 2.4 GHz (13cm) band is included in the Foundation licence, so you’re permitted to transmit there. You’ll need a small dish for the downlink side — many people repurpose an old Sky dish — and a suitable uplink transverter or dedicated setup. It’s a project, but not an impossibly expensive one, and the BATC’s WebSDR at eshail.batc.org.uk lets you listen in right now without any hardware at all.

What About LEO Satellites? Even Easier to Start

If the dish and microwave setup sounds like a stretch for now, LEO FM satellites are a brilliant place to begin. These are small satellites in low orbit that pass overhead several times a day, and many of them have simple FM voice repeaters on board — just like a terrestrial repeater, but 400 miles up.

The uplinks are typically on the 70cm band (around 435 MHz) and downlinks on 2m (around 145 MHz). Both bands are available to Foundation licence holders. You can make your first satellite contact with nothing more exotic than a dual-band handheld — the classic Yaesu FT-65 or Baofeng UV-5R that many of us started with — and a home-made Yagi or even a simple crossed dipole.

The key things to get right are:

• Doppler shift: as the satellite races towards you and then away, the frequency shifts slightly. You’ll need to retune during the pass, or use software like Gpredict to automate it.
• Pass prediction: apps like ISS Detector or websites like n2yo.com tell you exactly when a satellite will be overhead and at what angle — essential for pointing your antenna.
• Listen first: before you transmit, have a few passes just listening. You’ll hear the distinctive sound of SSB signals and — on FM birds — actual voice contacts. There’s nothing quite like that moment when you first hear someone talking through a machine in orbit.

Getting Started: Resources Worth Bookmarking

AMSAT-UK have put together some of the best beginner resources around. Their “How do I start with satellites?” page is well worth an evening’s reading, and they have specific guides on working FM satellites and even using your handheld transceiver for satellite work.

For QO-100, the BATC forum and the AMSAT-DL operating guidelines are your friends. And if you want to just dip your toes in before committing to any hardware, spend half an hour with the BATC’s QO-100 WebSDR and listen to what’s happening up there. I did exactly this when I was still M7RJJ, and it was one of those moments that made me want to upgrade and get properly active.

Mark Your Diary: RSGB Convention in October

If EMF Camp has whetted your appetite for this kind of experimentation, the RSGB Convention is taking place at Milton Keynes between 9–11 October 2026. It’s the biggest gathering of UK amateur radio operators of the year, and there’s always a strong satellite and space radio presence. Tickets are already on sale — worth considering if you want to talk to the people who were running that QO-100 ground station at Eastnor.

The Bigger Picture

What EMF Camp demonstrates every time is that amateur radio isn’t just about HF contacts and contest weekends. It’s a living, experimental hobby that stretches from the bottom of the bands all the way to geostationary orbit and beyond. As an M7 or newly upgraded M0, you already have the licence to participate in most of it.

The satellite side of the hobby has a bit of a reputation for being complicated and expensive, and there’s a grain of truth there for the full QO-100 station setup. But listening to QO-100 costs nothing. Working a pass on an FM LEO satellite costs the price of a handheld and an afternoon making a tape measure Yagi. The learning curve is real, but it’s genuinely one of the most rewarding corners of the hobby I’ve explored.

73 de M0LGI