AssetBurned:
Sorry, you'll never gain access to AO-40 with WLAN cards, wrong portion of the "S" band, and wrong uplink to the bird as well.
AO-40 uses "L" band and UHF for uplinks and S-band for the downlink. The other barier to your use is a ham license, and the mode of operation too. You'll need SSB/CW to hear and work this bird, plus, your uplink should be at least 100 watts ERP(Effective Radiated Power), so there again, you have difficulty with anybody hearing your flea-powered signal/s.
L-band: 1.2 Ghz. mainly the lower end of the spectrum is used for satellite work, generating adequate power amplification is affordable with solid-state and the ubiquitous 2C39A triode in a cavity amplifier.
S-band is once again, even MORE difficult in generating effective power, the cost is greater, components are costlier and WLAN cards do NOT support fixed or variable frequency operation with single sideband or cw as you MUST track your downlink and uplink through doppler correction,
so you can toss out your Orinoco cards and ALL WLAN cards for this area of experimentation.

You must also have a current table of Kepplerian "elements" to be able to track when the "bird" is within range of your station, as well as the squint angle of your antennas pattern/s.

For antenna construction hints and kinks, I suggest this book: The ARRL UHF/MICROWAVE EXPERIMENTER'S HANDBOOK from the ARRL at 225 Main Street, Newington, CT. 06111
That book is over 400 pages of information, theory and applications relating to ATV, SSB, repeaters, satellite ops, construction, antennas for microwave ops with yagis, helices, parabolas and more!
This is a "MUST OWN" book for anybody seriously interested in making their RF gear operate better and more efficiently as well.

73!
DATA, KA9UCE, A.E.C
www.geocities.com/aec9823