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

HamSat iPhone App
by Bob Cutter 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

An update has just been released and it is very good. The improvements are extensive and useful. 73, Bob KIØG

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Re: FO-29 Operation
by WILLIAMS MICHAEL 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

This is probably the most important email about FO-29. I've high lighted and underlined the most important parts of the message. I looks like FO-29 will not be in full operation until the first part of 2010. At this moment it is only commanded on over Japan as noted in the schedule. With the issue of the batteries, it seems JAMSAT would consider similiar operations as it is now doing when FO-29 enters long periods of darkness in the future. This would possibly allow a longer life for this great bird. Thanks to JE9PEL for this important infornation. Mike (K9QHO) AMSAT 33589 --- On Wed, 9/9/09, WILLIAMS MICHAEL <k9qho6762(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: From: WILLIAMS MICHAEL <k9qho6762(a)sbcglobal.net> Subject: FO-29 Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 11:06 PM Start of FO-29 article:----------------------------------------------------- FO-29 status in 2009 FO-29 launched in August 1996 and has been working 14 years. FO-29 is planning to operate the consecutive use with the analog transponder until the end of August 2009, but it was confirmed that a transponder stopped on August 25. In the later pass, the transponder operation is confirmed when we sent a command of transponder ON from the control station, but we stopped transponder temporarily now. We had the a similar symptom of stopping the transponder in the spring of 2007 . FO-29 is in the "high shade rate period" now. Both of the transponder stop in the spring of 2007 and this time are thought that by this "high shade rate" and by the rise of the internal resistance of the deterioration of the battery and by the influence of the temperature of the battery. The power control system FO-29 (PCU) watches a terminal voltage of the battery and turns off the power supply of the transmitter automatically if it becomes less than the setting voltage. In addition, When FO-29 enters the sunshine area and it recovers to the setting voltage by sun battery power, it is designed to turn on a transmitter automatically. However malfunction occurred for this function in 2007. Because of transmitter was not turned on automatically, We made an operation schedule plan from the summer of 2007 and managed 1-2 times on in a day. This management operation worked well. The electricity income and expenditure restored or it was cured spontaneously.The transponder has been worked without control command from control station from summer of 2008. The power supply circumstances of current FO-29 is almost same situation as stop period spring of 2007, scheduled operation period, the consecutively operative period from the summer of 2008 and it is in a "high shade rate". This transponder off is supposed to be a similar situation as when transponder stopped in the spring of 2007. ***From this , We decided that we make the operation schedule plan, and manage the limit of the operative number of times in one day like last time to keep the electricity income and expenditure untill improve the "shade rate" which is in January, 2010. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks control team JA1COU Yutaka Murata Message: 7 Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:25:03 +0900 From: Mineo Wakita <ei7m-wkt(a)asahi-net.or.jp> Subject: [amsat-bb] FO-29 schedule Sep. and Oct. To: amsat-bb(a)amsat.org Message-ID: <10CA3077029EECei7m-wkt(a)asahi-net.or.jp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii FO-29 still has some trouble. Therefore it is examination use for a while only over Japan. We do not yet understand when it recover. There are the reception report from South America and Europe. You may listen to CW with luck over your area. Control station says that you may be listen in Australia, South America, North America, and Europe in particular. Control station says more as follows. The transmitter becomes OFF by UVC automatically in the eclipse. The station confirmed the moment when the transmitter became OFF please inform it of the date and time at the following address. lab (at) jarl.or.jp The below * is a predicted pass that command work take time. And please consent to be a possibility that we cannot turn ON the transponder by the state of the line. ----------------- September, UTC 11 21:37 12 12:21*, 22:26 13 11:30 14 22:23 15 None 16 12:15*, 22:20 17 None 18 12:03*, 22:15 19 11:15, 21:20 20 12:05* 21 12:55*, 22:58 22 10:10, 22:10 23 12:50 24 None 25 10:58, 22:50 26 11:50*, 21:55 27 12:36* 28 21:50 29 12:35*, 22:45 30 11:40*, 21:45 October, UTC 1 12:30*, 22:35 2 11:35, 21:45 3 12:25, 22:28 4 11:28 5 22:25 6 13:08, 21:33 7 12:10, 22:23 8 13:05, 21:35 9 None 10 11:12, 23:08 11 12:05*, 22:12 12 11:08 13 None ----------------- JE9PEL, Mineo Wakita ------------------------------

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Re: All Satellites
by William Leijenaar 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

Hello AMSATs, I agree that APRS can have a higher power transmittter, because of its small amount of time to get the data broadcasted. However the workability with the HT and whipe antenna is only an advantage for the downlink. For the uplink there will be no advantage. Personally I believe that making a satellite easier accessable will also decrease its functional efficiency. This is especially the case for satellites with limited user access, like single channel FM satellites. This also includes APRS. The same issue is valide for a geostationary satellite, with the addition that a geostationary satellite would be overloaded in short time by more and more stronger stations as fixed antennas can be used. Only the uplink power level would be the parameter of "competition". Resulting in a privat chat satellite for only few (high power) users. Satellites for emergency communication sounds very interresting, and personally I believe it can give a great advantage when doing it well. The question is only what will work well in an emergency situation. It will depend on the needs and the availability of equipment in the effected area. I believe that digital communication will be of limited use as you need also a computer, modem, keyboard, screen, software etc besides your radio. Only one thing missing and you will not be "heared". I don't say it is impossible, but to make the system work the ground stations need to be made more easier somehow. Maybe HT APRS in combination with voice to text conversion (and opposite) would be an idea ? Besides the technical difficulty there is also the (human) organising factor. I heared some ideas about an easy to access geostationary satellite with high power downlink. That would be great, but without any communication control it would be like the FM LEOs where everyone talks at the same time and nobody is able to get there message through. It might be solved with a central control centre on a safe place (maybe by the Amateur Radio Emergency Service ?) that has control over the satellite radio and uses it as a remote radio "ear" in space. In this way it is also possible to use one frequency simplex system. Just some ideas, 73 de PE1RAH, William Leijenaar ---

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Symposium Restaurant Locations
by Frank H. Bauer 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

All, I had to go on some unexpected travel out of BWI the past couple of weeks. So I did some reconnaissance and developed a couple of maps that depict restaurants near the hotel and airport. You can retrieve these at the AMSAT Symposium Web Site. Go to the food and drink icon and click on the pdf or ppt file. I also included in this package directions to the G&M Restaurant which is close to the hotel. This restaurant just received the WTOP "Best Crab Cake" award through a survey from the radio station's Baltimore/Washington listeners. This restaurant has good food at reasonable prices. We will be including paper copies of these maps in the symposium registration packet. But wanted to give you a heads up, so you can plan out your meals. And if you haven't registered for the symposium yet, please do so. We are less than 2 weeks away!! 73, Frank, KA3HDO

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W6ZQ's activity from Hawaii tonight
by Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

Hi! As "advertised", Ron W6ZQ made another appearance on AO-51 this evening from Kauai. Tonight, he worked from grid BL01, and made contacts with 10 stations and almost completed an 11th QSO on this pass. For the first time during this trip, Ron worked a couple of VE6 stations from Kauai (VE6EGN and VE6ITV). Alaska was also represented; Craig KL4E in Alaska made a QSO with W6ZQ just before Hawaii went out of AO-51's footprint. This was the last time Ron will be on the satellites from Hawaii on this trip, as he will be returning home on Wednesday. Ron - thanks for all your efforts to be on many passes from Kauai, plus the pass from the "big island" last week, during your vacation. Now if we could get someone on AO-7 from out there... 73! Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/

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Re: All Satellites (Alan P. Biddle)
by Mark VandeWettering 28 Sep '09

28 Sep '09

> > At a SmallSat conference I attended on behalf of AMSAT this summer, I was > amused at the casual assumption by a researcher that 50, Five Oh, cubesats > could be launched as part of an upper atmosphere project using ham > frequencies for the downlinks. (They would have a lifetime of only 3-4 > months.) Jan King, W3GEY/VK4GEY, who does coordination of satellite > frequencies, gently but firmly brought them down to earth a bit. > > On the one hand, we get new hams with interests in space communications from > these projects, but on the other we need to prevent the de facto > appropriation of needed frequencies. A fine line to walk. > > Alan > WA4SCA The thing that worries me the most is that the de facto appropriation of our amateur satellite frequencies seems very likely if we continue along a path which keeps us from filling those slots with payloads of our own. All this complaining about cubesats and the use of amateur frequencies for telemetry is kind of pointless if we aren't using those frequencies and have no prospect of using those frequencies in the foreseeable future. It seems to me that coordinating 50 cubesats for four months could be a tractable problem, depending on the precise nature of the signals and their orbital spacing. It's not like there is a huge number of operational amateur satellites that they'd have to avoid. Mark K6HX

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Operation from BOUNTY
by Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

I'll try to operate the FM sats from BOUNTY, http://tallshipbounty.org, as we sail from Galway to St Petersburg, Florida over the next 6 to 8 weeks. I have my IC-W31 and an Arrow antenna. I've not been on for a long time, so we'll see how it goes. The location of the ship is availabloe from its web site, and I'll be recording the contacts. 73, doug

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Wanted: simple ISS tracking page
by Andrew Rich 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

I am looking for a simple tracking display for my sat_status site Ideas ? I see a few but they are surrounded by goobly goop ---------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Rich Airways Technical Officer Grade 4 Surveillance - RADAR ADS-B Amateur Radio Callsign VK4TEC email: vk4tec(a)tech-software.net web: www.tech-software.net

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TLE lottery September 27th
by Mike Rupprecht 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

my new assignment from this day onwards BEESAT 1 35934U 09051D 09269.68120117 .00003302 00000-0 81574-3 0 66 2 35934 098.3288 004.3565 0005573 295.8442 064.2169 14.52717731 502 SWISSCUBE 1 35932U 09051B 09269.40698594 .00005218 00000-0 12986-2 0 61 2 35932 098.3356 004.0898 0007064 277.3767 082.6492 14.52117154 454 UWE-2 1 35933U 09051C 09269.33689778 .00007796 00000-0 19109-2 0 76 2 35933 098.3346 004.0205 0004530 289.2313 070.8246 14.52686952 442 ITUPSAT1 1 35935U 09051E 09269.75149288 .00001930 00000-0 48744-3 0 62 2 35935 098.3414 004.4366 0007021 277.0543 082.9840 14.52119405 505 73, Mike DK3WN

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FO-29
by Vincenzo Mone 27 Sep '09

27 Sep '09

Hello, I would like to know if the FO-29 is working or not. Thanks 73 de Enzo IK8OZV EasyLog 5 BetaTester EasyLog PDA BetaTester WinBollet BetaTester D.C.I. CheckPoint Regione Campania Skype: ik8ozv8520 *************************************** ***** GSM +39 338 9749786 ***** ***** SMS +39 338 9749786 ***** ***** FAX +39 328 7244294 ***** *** 2nd e-mail: vimone(a)tin.it *** ***************************************

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