October 2009 - AMSAT-BB - mailman.amsat.org

LUSAT silent
by Mike Rupprecht 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

Hi all, nothing heard from LUSAT LO-19 today. Last report from Jim AC4AV was on October 11th, 2009. <http://www.dk3wn.info/p/?cat=15> http://www.dk3wn.info/p/?cat=15 73, Mike DK3WN

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EN04 possable activation
by Rodney Waln 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

i know that this is short notice, but i will be going to Huron,SD (EN04) this Saturday if things work out, it may also be possible that i will do a grid boundary EN04/EN14 if conditions permit, all operations will be on a, if time permits and will be after noon/evening passes FM SAT's i wish i could be more accurate but this will be a secondary reason for going there, hope to work you, Rodney kc0zhf

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antenna question
by Samudra Haque 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

Hi, Amsat-BB Are there any antenna designs that use predominantly rotating sub-reflectors and a reflector for tracking LEO birds, in contrast to rotating the main antenna structure on booms in the AZ-EL directions ? I am aware of multi-LNB antenna arrangements, thought it would be interesting to find out ways to keep a fairly large reflector constant on the ground and use a smaller steerable sub-reflector or horn feed to aim the beam ? Any ideas ? Samudra N3RDX

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Arrow 10W Duplexer Performance Measurements
by Allan Saul 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

Quite a lot of guys are using the handy Arrow Model 10W duplexer for the handheld 146/437 antenna and mine arrived here today so I thought I would put it on the network analyser and see how it performs..... >From the Radio cable to the 2m antenna connector an Insertion Loss of 0.75dB was measured with a rejection of 57dB at 70cm. The VSWR at 2m was 1.24:1 >From the Radio cable to the 70cm antenna connector an Insertion Loss of 1.2dB was measured with an attenuation of 56dB on the 2m signal. The VSWR at 70cm was 1.29:1 The VSWR on the 2m port was 1.21:1 and on the 70cm port was 1.20:1 For those guys wanting to look at the actual plots they can be found here http://www.rfdesign.co.za/default.asp?pageID=785423593&filePath=D:\SoftPage… 73's Allan ZS1LS

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New items for sale at the AMSAT online store
by Bruce 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

Did you miss the symposium? Now available at the AMSAT online store -- a 40th Anniversary Tote as well as the Proceedings of the Symposium. Get yours while supplies last. 73...bruce Sent from my iPhone

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Putting the ISS together in sequences
by w6zkh＠comcast.net 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

Interesting concept: http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm

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HRD satellite tracker + 2 radios
by Bruce R Brown 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

I wonder if anyone has had any luck doing this. I have a ft-100 and 706mkIIG for radios. HRD will talk to each radio. I cannot get the second radio recognized by the program. would like to tune downlink with one radio and the uplink with the other radio using one instance of the HRD program. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Reply off list if you wish to do so. 73, Bruce ke0lx willmarbrowns(a)q.com

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Re: volunteering
by Steve Daniels 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

Hi Joe, Most of my experience is with Gentoo Linux, Apache, mysql. Plus relevant utils. On top of which running SMF for a bulletin board integrated with coppermine for a gallery. Also Oww and RRD for display data from my weather station. Also used DADA for a mailing list. That being said I have plenty of time on my hands at the moment, so I am happy to load up Joomla or any other CMS and learn it. One of my reasons for volunteering was some of the very out of date web pages I was coming across. As I was attempting to get back into amateur radio. (I lived in a location that maid radio impossible) So I would be more than happy to help out. Steve G6UIM -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Armbruster [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 22 October 2009 02:18 To: Steve Daniels Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Re: volunteering Steve, You have web development experience correct ? Are you familiar at all with Joomla ? One of the current desires of Amsat is to port over the existing website to a content management system like Joomla. I set up wikimedia and joomla for testing purposes and Gould seemed to like Joomla better. The primary reason is that adding and editing content is a breeze with it. So, what i'm starting to move over content into the Joomla instance. I'm getting the menus, sections, etc... setup so that showing it off will be nice. If you're interested I could use your help in making it happen. I have a Parallels VM with Ubuntu that I could pass on to you if you'd like to test out Joomla. It's reasonably trivial to set up but i'm not certain of your experience. Let me know if you're interested in helping out. Joe On Oct 21, 2009, at 7:31 PM, Steve Daniels wrote: > Hi David > > Happy to help in any way I can. I can see updating web pages as a > way I can > help to some small degree. Recently clicked on amsat sites where > some pages > have not been updated in years. Even if the info is still valid it > looks > bad. > > Having worked in education am happy to get involved in that > direction, you > will know that experience. > > > > Steve G6UIM > > > > _____ > > From: G0MRF(a)aol.com [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: 20 October 2009 23:30 > To: steve(a)daniels270.eclipse.co.uk > Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Re: volunteering > > > > In a message dated 20/10/2009 22:00:31 GMT Standard Time, > steve(a)daniels270.eclipse.co.uk writes: > > > Hi David > > Sadly no I don't have any 2m design experience, my design experience > is > mostly high voltage switch mode PSU for powering Traveling Wave > Tubes, and > the microcontroller based management systems for controlling high > power > travelling wave tubes + PSUs. Mostly I have done the microcontroller > aspect > of that. Over recent years I have been mainly involved in I.T. admin > in > schools > > > > Steve > > Hi Steve. > > > > Thanks for the reply. Always good to know that someone is interested > in > supporting the AMSAT cause. The ESEO project is being funded > (hardware only) > by AMSAT UK while the launch is supplied by ESA Education. It's an > educational project with a small role for AMSAT. Currently we need > some > expertise for a 2m TX and some satellite antennas...although > hopefully the > antennas shouldn't be too much of a problem. > > > > http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Education/SEMA0NEMKBF_0.html > > > > Great on the PSU for TWT's. - with the microcontroller aspect of > management. > Perhaps I can 'store' that in case we need a hand in those areas in > the > future. Is it the PIC variety or ARM or some other specialised type > you are > familiar with? > > > > I'm working at a school as a science technician at present, so > possibly I > can appreciate your working environment quite well. Half term in 3 > days. - > Yippee. > > > > Regards > > > > David > > _______________________________________________ > Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the > author. > Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite > program! > Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb

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New AO-51 Whole Orbit Data decoder released by DK3WN
by Mark L. Hammond 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

Thanks to our resident telemery guru Mike Rupprecht DK3WN a new AO-51 whole orbit data (WOD) telemetry decoder has been released! The file with decoder and coefficients file can be downloaded from here: http://www.dk3wn.info/files/ao51wod.zip The AO-51 telemetry archive is on the AMSAT FTP server. DK3WN's new decoder is for processing "raw" WOD telemetry files. For example, the WOD data collected for October 2009 is here: ftp://ftp.amsat.org/pub/amsat/telemetry/ao51/2009WOD/Oct2009/raw1009/ The decoder generates a .CSV (comma separated) file that can be opened in Excel, etc. A nice feature is that the telemetry program acutally graphs the data, too! THANKS, Mike DK3WN! 73, -- Mark L. Hammond [N8MH]

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PIC sat tracker
by Andrew Rich 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

Putting together a USB 16F877 rotator control A/D serial and LOGIC Got a few options Predict as the AZ/EL engine and perl scripts. 1. Completely autonomous - quite hard to do in a PIC 2. Use the A/D and just send data back to LINUX and get LINUX to turn relays on / off via parra port 3. Send AZ and EL to the PIC, do a ASCII to BIN and then get the PIC to drive the rotators. 4. Use the A/D and send data to LINUX and then send back a serial command on what to do. Cheers Andrew VK4TEC

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