XiWANG - Chinese for hope

I had my first radio contact using a satellite as a repeater in 1997, and since then have made a total of 582; an average of less than 45 per year. So I have not been very busy using satellites which have to compete for my time with my many other amateur radio operating interests and construction projects. It usually needs the launch of a new satellite to get me interested again. Such was the case recently when China launched its first amateur radio communications satellite, called XiWang-1, ( Hope-1 ), on 15th December 2009.
Commissioning of this satellite finished in early September 2010, when it was then brought into operational service, using the broadcast callsign BJ1SA-11 and message board callsign BJ1SA-12 with uplink in the 145MHz band and downlink in the 435MHz band. Soon afterwards, I began listening to its beacon transmission in morse code and decoding its data signal, for example,
BJ1SA-11 To DL8DR [21:07:48]
OK DL8DR\\D
BJ1SA-12 To BBSTAT [21:08:05]
Open BJ1SA-12:1
BJ1SA-12 To OZ7SAT [21:08:15]
BJ1SA-11 To PBLIST [21:08:28]
PB: DL8DR\\D
This week I have enjoyed making my first two-way radio contacts through this "bird"; so far with other amateur radio stations in Italy, Norway, France, Belgium and Hungary. I have already received a radio contact confirmation card from one of them.
The antennas I am using are crossed dipoles, ( uplink ), and helical, ( downlink ); both are home-made and can be seen in the picture which I posted on 11th May.
PS. 11th December. After my initial euphoria my enthusiasm has been dampened by the fact that the cw/ssb transponder seems to be turned off for long periods.