Essex Ham Chat Forum

Welcome to the forum and the hobby richard

amsat do a software package called satpc32, its free if you don't mind entering your lat / long each time you start it, so you can try it out, get your radio working with CAT control so as to track the doppler shift of the satellite etc, or if you pay $60 to register it it will remember that and a few other bits

https://www.amsat.org/status/ will give you a list of active satellites and you can see when they were last heard etc

twitter is a useful tool as well as if you follow a few of the amateur guys they post which satellite they have used etc so you can see which are definitely active

as to the Intermediate exam go for it, you will see its the same as foundation just in a little more detail and a few more blocks on the block diagrams of the RX and TX and a couple more antenna types

the full license is a much bigger step with more electronics theory

have fun 

73

Peter

M0PWX (2E0PWX)