My first satellite QSO was with my good friend OM Bindu - VU2IR.
It was around 6.00pm, one evening in the early 1990s, when Bindu and I were chewing the rag on 2m and he excused himself to work through a satellite.
I was curious when he said he would work SSB via RS-12 with a 21MHz uplink and 145MHz downlink and would I care to join?
With hardly 10 minutes to go, I hurriedly set up a Yaesu FT-757GX (just serviced and ready to be delivered) with my 40m inverted 'V' dipole antenna for the uplink. My homebrew 2m converter and ¼ λ ground plane antenna would serve for the downlink, with my RCA BC312-D receiver as the tunable IF stage (see My homebrew 2m FM rig for more details). And my first satellite contact was thus established.
Fortunately, it was just the two of us and we continued our ragchew for the duration of the pass. With OM Bindu just 5km away, it was once again proved that the long way round is the short way!
_______________________________