January 2007 - AMSAT-BB - mailman.amsat.org

Contact with little Brian was my pleasure
by John Price 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

I got your card in the mail today. I wish to thank you for giving me the chance to speak with your son Brian on AO-51 1-12-07. My card will be in the mail tomorrow morning to you. It is always a pleasure to make contact with the kids and as I understand this young fellow is only 4 years old. You sure are giving him a early start. I know it will pay off in years to come. As my Aussie friends would say "Good on you Mate". 73's << John -- N4QWF Amateur Radio Operator >> AO-7,FO-29,SO-50,AO-51,VO-52,ISS >> Internet N4QWF(a)AMSAT.ORG >> Formerly KC4AHW VK3FEZ >> Amsat Member #27845 >> DXCC #33,478 >> VUCC SAT #135 >> WAS SAT #296 >> 51 on 51 #013 >> LON -79.25 LAT 37.45 Grid FM07 >> >From the Foothills of the Blueridge >>

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FT 847 VHF Birdies
by W1FC＠aol.com 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

Gentleman, Does anyone have any experience eliminating birdies on 435 when transmitting on 145? Example, a loud birdie occurs when transmitting on 145,920, even into dummy load, appears on 435,310. Thanks Fred W1FC

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OSCAR-11 Report
by Clive Wallis 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

OSCAR-11 REPORT 23 Jnauary 2007 TELEMETRY AND REPORTS WANTED! To investigate the date problem mentioned below, I would welcome some telemetry from differents parts of the world, at times when the orbits do not pass over the UK. These times are approximately from 10:00 to 16:00 and from 19:00 to 04:00 UTC. If you don't have a decoder, I can now accept short WAV files of good audio, duration up to 30 seconds. I would also like reports of reception around the times of expected beacon switch ON and OFF. No telemetry wanted, just when you listen, and whether you heard, or didn't hear the bird. Please e-mail to the address below. During the period 29 December 2006 to 23 January 2007, the satellite was heard from 08 to 18 January. Good steady signals have beeen heard on all passes, and excellent copy of the telemetry obtained. The on-board clock has maintained accurate time, over the reporting period, gaining 2.5 seconds. However the hour counter sometimes shows an error of of 10 hours, ie. in its most significent digit. The 'day of the week' counter operates reliably, zero representing Thursday. The date counter appears to be incrementing correctly, but the day of the month is not reset to one, at the end of each month. Possibly, it resets to 41, ie. the unused bit representing 40 permanently stuck at a one. On 17 January the date was shown as 51 December 2006. Further investigation is required to establish exactly how the date connter changes. If the satellite's watchdog timer continues to operate normally, the beacon should switch ON around 28/29 January 2007. The satellite is in full sunlight at the present time, and will remain in this state until mid-April 2007, when eclipses start again. I am indebted to Bob G4VRC and Dean AL7CR for their reports. Reports around the times of the expected beacon switch ON/OFF, are especially useful. Many thanks. The current status of the satellite, is that all the analogue telemetry channels, 0 to 59 are zero, ie they have failed. The status channels 60 to 67 were still working. The spacecraft computer and active attitude control system have switched OFF, ie. the satellite' attitude is controlled only by the passive gravity boom gradient, and the satellite is free to spin at any speed. When telemetry was last received it showed that one of the solar arrays had failed, and there was a large unexplained current drain on the main 14 volt bus. After 22 years in orbit the battery has undergone around 100,000 partial charge/discharge cycles, and observations suggest that it cannot power the satellite during eclipses, or sometimes during periods of poor solar attitude. The watchdog timer now operates on a 20 day cycle. The ON/OFF times have tended to be very consistent. The average of many observations show this to be 20.7 days, ie. 10.3 days ON followed by 10.4 days OFF. However, poor solar attitude may result may result in a low 14 volt line supply, which may cause the beacon to switch OFF prematurely, and reset the watchdog timer cycle. When this occurs, the beacon is OFF for 20.7 days. The Beacon frequencies are - VHF 145.826 MHz. AFSK FM ASCII Telemetry UHF 435.025 MHz. OFF S-band 2401.5 MHz. OFF Listeners to OSCAR-11 may be interested in visiting my website. If you need to know what OSCAR-11 should sound like, there is a short audio clip for you to hear. The website contains an archive of news & telemetry data. It also contains details about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture. There is software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry. The URL is www.users.zetnet.co.uk/clivew/ If you place this bulletin on a terrestrial packet network, please use the bulletin identifier $BID:U2RPT129.CWV, to prevent duplication. 73 Clive G3CWV xxxxx(a)amsat.org (please replace xxxxx by g3cwv)

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Re: Ham radio in Films & TV ?
by jules＠g0nzo.co.uk 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

I seem to recall an episode of the 'A Team', where they were using a parabolic microphone from a rooftop and the apparatus connected to it appeared to be an FT101. Jules

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Re: AMSAT-NA totally metric?
by Daniel Schultz 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

>NASA has finally agreed to fly to the moon in metric - a >move its scientists have wanted ever since they mixed up >kilometres with miles and crashed an expensive spacecraft >near Mars. The actual mixup was pounds (of force) and Newtons, and the JPL trajectory analysts knew that the spacecraft was off course but their managers would not listen to them when they said that a course correction was needed. That was real cause of the accident. Moral of the story: when your highly educated expert employee tells you that he doesn't understand what is going on, you better drop everything and get to the bottom of the mystery before disaster happens. >On the other hand many caculations are simplified with metrics, >wavelength for example. Amps, Volts, Farads, Henrys, Ohms, >Frequency, and Watts are same in metric and need no conversion. The electrical units are NOT "the same in metric", they ARE metric!!! My pet metric peeves: Newspaper and magazine editors (probably English majors) who quote excessive precision when converting from metric to US units, as in "the asteroid is estimated to have a diameter of 1000 kilometers (620 miles)". The scientist they interviewed does not know the diameter to more than one significant figure, so quoting 620 miles is absurd. The same editors also convert rocket thrust from pounds (of force) into kilograms, because they don't know that pounds can measure mass or force and these ARE NOT THE SAME THING! In respected scientific publications I see statements such as "the 100 pound (45.3 kilogram) rocket thrusters..." when they SHOULD have written "the 100 pound (400 Newton) rocket thrusters....". As a teaching assistant in the freshman "physics for pharmacists" class I was required to teach the international students about feet, inches, pounds and miles when I should have been teaching the US students how to do physics in metric units. It is however a fact of life that both systems of units will be around for quite some time, and engineers in the United States need to be fully conversant in both systems of measurements. And if I find a nice South Bend lathe on E-bay I'm not going to pass it up just because it wasn't made for metric machining. Dan Schultz N8FGV

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Re: Ham Culture
by Daniel Schultz 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

Quoting from http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10967 >"Hundreds of thousands of amateur radio operators..... >built and operated two-way radios for recreation >in mid twentieth century America." >"...many men adopted the technical hobby of ham radio from the >1930s through 1970s and how the pastime helped....." >"Ham radio required... " >"hobbyists developed... " >"Outsiders viewed... " >"employers recruited... " >"electronics manufacturers catered to... " Why is everything written in the past tense? Is the whole book written that way? Doesn't anybody do ham radio now, in the 21st century? Any mention of ham satellites in the book? Dan Schultz N8FGV

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Re: Ham radio in Films & TV ?
by James R Miller 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

The first James Bond movie "Dr No" (1962) features amateur radio equipment. I /think/ it's the British made KW Electronics LTD range, much coveted at the time this then 20-something nerd. Not having see the film for many years, I cannot recall if the system is actually made use of. 73 de James G3RUH

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GeneSat-1 telemetry Jan.23
by Mineo Wakita 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM [01/23/07 04:23:40 UTC] <UI C>: GeneSat1.orgC30B633E01CF01B80124020000A4019F66346463005D60D562B8 KE7EGC>UNDEF,TELEM [01/23/07 04:23:45 UTC] <UI C>: GeneSat1.orgC80B634A0002002C00B500250069009F0A8E1860640018C06300 by GeneSat-1 Telemetry Decoder -------------------------------------------------------- BusTime : 75d 03:04:35 Solar1 Temp : 13.2984 C Payload Temp : 19.8138 C Solar2 Temp : 19.4594 C Main Comm Temp : 23.583 C Solar1 Current : 0 mA Solar2 Current : 0 mA Solar3 Current : 0 mA Solar4 Current : 0 mA Main Comm Current : 0 mA Payload Current : 0 mA Main Comm Voltage : 5.028 V Gamma Rad Sensor : 0 uRad Subsystem Pow St : 159 Experiment Sample Time : 6567014 s (76d 00:10:14) Exp Average Temp : 152.3836 mC Optical Density : 54624 ODU Flourescence : 47202 RFU -------------------------------------------------------- BusTime : 75d 03:04:40 Solar1 Temp : 0 C Payload Temp : 0 C Solar2 Temp : 0 C Main Comm Temp : 0 C Solar1 Current : 66.4909 mA Solar2 Current : -1.012 mA Solar3 Current : 40.9948 mA Solar4 Current : 171.647 mA Main Comm Current : 229.1713 mA Payload Current : 18.3377 mA Main Comm Voltage : 0 V Gamma Rad Sensor : 0 uRad Subsystem Pow St : 159 Experiment Sample Time : 1609226 s (18d 15:00:26) Exp Average Temp : 0.6524 mC Optical Density : 49176 ODU Flourescence : 99 RFU --------------------------------------------- Name: Mineo Wakita / JE9PEL, JAMSAT member Mail: ei7m-wkt(a)asahi-net.or.jp URL : http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hamradio/je9pel/ QTH : Yokohama Japan, GL:pm95tj Date: Jan 23, 2007 ---------------------------------------------

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Re: AMSAT-NA totally metric?
by Reicher, James 22 Jan '07

22 Jan '07

The REALLY important question: Does a woman who lies about her weight suffer from mass delusion? 73 de N8AU, Jim in Raymore, MO Light travels faster than sound... This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:43:55 +1100 From: Tony Langdon <vk3jed(a)gmail.com> Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: AMSAT-NA totally metric? and now almost totally off topic. To: zl2cia(a)amsat.org, AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb(a)amsat.org> Message-ID: <200701220644.l0M6hxPY022134(a)localhost.localdomain> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 03:38 PM 1/22/2007, Sil - ZL2CIA wrote: >Are you really weightless in space? Surely you're just in free fall. >When the term "weightless" is used to describe the condition >astronauts experience, this is surely a literary term, rather than a >scientific one. As it turns out, the answer is "yes" or "no". It depends on your frame of reference and the definition you use. Using the definition that weight is the force exerted by gravity, then one would presume at a point near the Earth - Moon L1 point, you would be very nearly weightless (there would be some unbalanced gravitational influence of the Sun most of the time, but you could move around and null that out too...).

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Fwd: Re: Ham radio in Films & TV ?
by Margaret Leber 22 Jan '07

22 Jan '07

On 1/22/07, Roger Kolakowski <rogerkola(a)aol.com> wrote: > How fast is a Cray-2 in comparison to computers now? ;-) ...from the Cray website: --------------- The first Cray-1™ system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory. .The Cray-2™ system appeared in 1985, providing a tenfold increase in performance over the Cray-1. ------------- It's more a little misleading to just quote megaflops for a vector processor. But a 1.2GHz Athlon is quoted as peaking at around 600 megaflops. So, getcherself a quad SMP mobo... By the way, Bob. Piet's last name is spelled "Hein". 73 de Maggie K3XS "In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers." --Adm. Grace Hopper

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