October 2011 - AMSAT-BB - mailman.amsat.org

% in EM55
by wa4hfn＠comcast.net 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

The 5 in em55 award info can be seen on QRZ lookup WA4NVM or WA4HFN . Skeds are ok too. Several donations to AMSAT have been made from this award Thank you

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WD9EWK @ Tucson AZ hamfest and post-hamfest activity, 22 October
by Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

Hi! The hamfest season out here in Arizona is about to start. I will be at the Old Pueblo Radio Club's annual hamfest in Tucson AZ a week from Saturday, on 22 October 2011. This is a week later than usual, since this hamfest has normally taken place the same weekend as the Scouting Jamboree on the Air event. The hamfest will be at the usual location in Tucson, at the Kino Sports Complex along the north side of Ajo Way at Forgeus Avenue, east of the I-10 freeway and the baseball stadium (grid DM42me). The hamfest officially runs from 7am-noon (1400-1900 UTC), although people start showing up before sunrise and many leave before noon. During the hamfest, WD9EWK will be on whatever FM and SSB satellites are available doing on-air demonstrations. On the SSB birds, I try to park about 5-10 kHz above the center of the transponders, depending on other activity and QRM/QRN. Please feel free to call WD9EWK during those demonstrations and say "hello" to the crowds. After the hamfest, I plan on driving either to the DM51bx/DM52ba or DM52ax/DM53aa grid boundaries in southeastern Arizona to work some passes on my way home. I have operated from both of these grid boundaries earlier this year - DM51bx/DM52ba in early May, and DM52ax/DM53aa in late March - and try to visit these locations when I attend hamfests in southern Arizona. If you have a preference on which boundary I should try to work from after the hamfest, please e-mail me directly. I can't guarantee I will go to the spot you would prefer, but it helps to know what people are interested in hearing on the birds. As with the hamfest demonstrations, I am prepared to work both FM and SSB from wherever I go out there. As with my other trips away from the Phoenix area, there is no need to send me a QSL request to get a WD9EWK QSL card for a hamfest QSO or a QSO from one of those grid boundaries. Just e-mail me the QSO details - if you're in the log, you'll get a card. QSOs will also be uploaded to the Logbook of the World system as WD9EWK, including the grid(s) and county for each QSO. 73! Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/

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Re: KickSat - a personal spacecraft of your own in space
by Zac Manchester 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

Hello All, Sorry for taking so long to respond here on the AMSAT-BB - I know I've spoken with some of you separately by email through kickstarter, but I wanted to make sure I responded to everyone's concerns. In response to Andreas' comments about wanting to use his own hardware to listen to the Sprites, this is exactly the sort of thing I want to encourage, and why I initially posted here. I posted a brief "Amateur Radio Information" item in the FAQ on kickstarter with some of this information, but I'll try to cover everything here. The Sprites will all be on the same frequency in the 70 cm band, and each will use a unique PRN spreading code so they can be identified. The hardware you'll need to receive these signals will be a yagi, rotator, LNA, and software defined radio (SDR) interface. We've been using a USRP box from Ettus Research along with GNU Radio, but the USRP is pretty expensive, so we're trying to make everything work with the FUNCube dongle (http://www.funcubedongle.com/). To work with the FUNCube, we have to make sure the signal bandwidth is < 80 kHz (it's currently around 100 kHz). I'll be posting all the details of our setup as we refine it, as well as all the code for the SDR. Even if you don't sponsor a Sprite, it would be great to have more people on the ground listening in. Everything we're doing will be documented, open-sourced, and freely available online. We will most definitely abide by all regulations and apply for frequency coordination with the IARU. We haven't taken that step yet because we have to actually be slotted for a specific launch first. This is also why we don't know our exact frequency yet. Please let me know if you have any additional questions. Thanks, Zac

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Re: Geostationary Satellite
by Howie DeFelice 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

I agree with much of what Dan, N8GFV, says. Our best hope of a high altitude satellite is probably a hosted payload on a GEO sat. To make that viable we need to consider the entire mission. GEO satellite operators are a for-profit business and every aspect of a commercial satellite has a dollar value. The major items are spectrum, power and fuel. Since hams bring their own spectrum, that is a no cost item for us. If we need to use satellite power then we would need to pay the market rate for the percentage of the total satellite resource used for the design lifetime of the satellite, typically 15 years. If the payload can be disabled by the operator we may be able to negotiate a pay as you go plan so that we don't have to pre-pay 15 years worth of power. Developing very power efficient transponder systems will reduce our costs. Trading bandwidth for power by using digital encoding, strong FEC, regenerative transponders with DSP signal enhancement will all aid in the reduction of the power required to close a link. The other big cost factor is fuel. As previously stated here, station keeping is a critical element in GEO satellites and with the advances of component technology, a satellites lifetime in orbit is determined primarily by the amount of station keeping fuel it can carry. The more fuel, the longer the satellite life, the more time the operator can use to recover their investment and make money. Every ounce added to the satellite affects the cost of the launch and possibly the amount of fuel that can be carried on board. Whether this is the case or not, the added satellite weight WILL add to the launch cost that we would have to pay. The good news is that the AMSAT community and the satellite operators have common interests in making satellites less expensive and more efficient. By building on the technology pioneered in ARISSAT-1 we MAY be able to get some cooperation from a commercial operator to deploy a technology demonstration package as a hosted payload. This might be more probable than one thinks. Satellite operators are EXTREMELY conservative and don't deploy new technology until it is thoroughly proven. The commercial satellite market is running out of real estate. Many of the big operators are at over 80% capacity. Since they are for-profit organizations, they are running out of product quickly and will not be able to grow their business. All the major operators are investing large amounts of money to promote a hosted payload business where government and scientific users can bring their own bandwidth to a transponder or payload on the operators platform. A low cost, high performance, innovative payload COULD be a great advertising tool for a commercial operator. The operator would get the payload for zero cost and could also get part of the launch cost subsidized by AMSAT in return for a real world, open source demonstration tool. If we build this payload along the lines of Tom Clark's C-C rider concept with a 5 GHz up/ 3 GHz. down transponder we can probably even use the satellites low gain telemetry antenna, further reducing payload costs. Sorry for the lengthy post but I have been thinking about this for a while and this seemed like a good opportunity to finally put it in writing. HowieAB2S

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Am-Comm Clear Speech Base DSP Filter For Sale
by Alan P. Biddle 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

I am doing some shack cleaning. This unit was originally sold by Am-Comm. Since then, the basic electronics have been repackaged, sometimes combined with a speaker, and sold by various companies. My experience is that most of the time it is amazing, though rarely it does very little. The exact improvement depends on the signal, type of noise, levels, etc. It made the difference on AO-40 around apogee. http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/1041 Currently West Mountain Radio is selling a similar unit, with an adjustable threshold added: http://www.westmountainradio.com/product_info.php?products_id=clr_dsp The unit is perfect mechanically and electrically. $80 including shipping in North America. Please contact me off list. Alan WA4SCA

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2011 AMSAT Space Symposium Hotel Reservations
by Martha 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

People - I have contacted the Wyndham hotel in San Jose CA and they have agreed to move the cutoff date for room reservations to *October 24th*. The phone number is 408-453-6200 and the reservation block code is AMSAT. The Symposium is November 4th - 6th with an optional tour on Sunday. For more information, go to the AMSAT website. Don't forget to register for the meeting and the banquet at the AMSAT store found on the website. -- 73- Martha

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Re: Geostationary Satellites
by Daniel Schultz 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

It is true that a Geo bird would only cover 1/3 of the Earth, but it would ALWAYS be there, with no need for antenna rotors or keps or a computer for tracking. It would be like picking up a telephone. It would be wonderful for emergency service in a disaster area. It could provide high speed digital communications on the amateur microwave bands in places where the internet is not available. Geosynchronous orbit slots are allocated by transponder frequency. On the amateur radio bands we are free to locate a satellite anywhere we can get to because we don't share our frequencies with commercial transponders. The reason we don't have any high altitude satellites is all about the money. We amateurs created the small satellite business. Back in the old days the big boys laughed at our cute little toy satellites, but they did allow us to bolt them to a launch vehicle for free or for very low cost. The experts were certain that our homebrew satellites wouldn't last a week without expensive mil-spec electronic components. We amateurs proved that small satellites were useful and thus created a market that we are now priced out of. The launches that used to be free can now be sold to paying customers for millions of dollars. Many of the companies in the small satellite business were founded by Amsat alumni. We amateurs are a non-commercial service, by law, with no product or service that we can sell to raise the $10 million that we would need to buy the sort of launch that we once got for very cheap. We cannot participate in the market economy because the law prohibits us from making money from our activity, which puts us at a huge disadvantage in competing for launches against those satellite owners who can make money. If future access to space is going to be limited to those with a good business plan then we might as well pack it in as satellite builders. The educational-industrial complex has no place for "amateurs" working alone in their basements and garages without any sort of formal academic plan and no supervision by management. Nobody in the commercial or government world cares if we can talk to Japan or Europe on amateur satellites or collect rare grid squares. It is all about education, which I am all in favor of except that I question if there really is such a crying shortage of engineers in the world. The students building their little Cubesats are going to find out someday that working for Lockheed Martin or Boeing or NASA is a far, far different world than their experience in building Cubesats. The Cubesats are a useless diversion but are popular with the powers that be because they allow young college students to build a satellite and deliver it to the launch pad. They are too small to carry the type of payload that we need to do effective communications in a high altitude orbit. The students and their sponsors don't care if the satellite actually works on orbit because they will have graduated by the time it is launched. They recognize that the world wide network of hams is a valuable resource for tracking and telemetry collection, but they use amateur radio frequencies without giving back anything to support the basis and purpose of amateur radio. If we are ever again going to have high altitude satellites for world wide DX and supporting high rate digital communications on our amateur microwave bands we will need to find clever ways to get larger satellites such as Eagle into higher orbits. We also screwed up with the failure of AO-40. We could have had 10,000 or more Amsat members right now if that satellite had worked as designed. Even if we could raise the bucks to build another one, there is no chance of getting another Ariane 5 launch. Amsat-DL has not been able to find any launch for the smaller Phase 3E satellite for any amount of money that we can think about paying. The way we did things two decades ago is not how we are going to do things now. Maybe we will never again have an Amsat-designed and built satellite but perhaps we can place a transponder on someone else's satellite in return for some sort of added value to them. There is money available for education support, maybe we can get some of it if we appeal to the right people. Maybe we can carry science experiments for NASA or some other agency if we provide operations support with telemetry and command. Maybe we can tap the same funding sources that the Google lunar competitors are getting. I don't have the answers, except that we will need to be just as clever as our predecessors were 50 years ago if we are ever going to have high altitude, high performance amateur satellites in our future. Dan Schultz, N8FGV

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Sat demo on VO-52
by Rodney Waln 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

hi, i know it is short notice but i have been asked to do a SAT demo during a ham meeting tommarrow, 10-12-2011/ 0137z the only pass that lines up with that time is VO-52 i will be around 145.910 USB if possable give me a shout, i will be working portable from the rare DN71 grid HI HI, Rodney, kc0zhf WY Amsat area Coordinator

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Re: Geostationary Satellites
by Lowell White 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

Short answer: Money. They are much more expensive than the little LEO's, CubeSat's, etc. 73, Lowell K9LDW ------ Original Message ------ Received: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:27:53 PM CDT From: "ka9qjg" <ka9qjg(a)wowway.com> To: <AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org> Subject: [amsat-bb] Geostationary Satellites > Hello Hope Everyone is doing Well, I know people say no such thing as a dumb > question So here goes What is the reason We do not have any Type of > geostationary Satellites. Is it because they are for World Wide Use and If > stationary one could Hit it 24/7 and Maybe park there butt on it and Run a > Beam and Amp and take it over > > > > Thanks > > > > 73 De Don KA9QJG > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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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JOTA this weekend
by Tom Schuessler 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

Jamboree on the Air is the annual joint activity between Scouting and Ham Radio. Held worldwide for 48 hours on October 15th and 16th. Many Amateur Radio groups all over the world will be helping Scouts and Guides make contacts via various modes and bands, including our satellites. I will again be managing the JOTA effort at the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas using call K2BSA/5. Although this is a daytime only operation Saturday, we hope to run SSB and FM passes of VO-52, AO-27 and AO-51 as well as tracking some beacon passes. Unfortunately there are no good ISS passes for our part of the US during the daytime hours. My encouragement to the satellite community is to please give way to any of these JOTA groups you might hear throughout the weekend. We have a wonderful opportunity to influence the upcoming generation of potential Hams and successful JOTA contacts work toward that end. In short, Let the Scouts have the birds this weekend, or at least, give a JOTA station a call. You will be glad you did and the Scouts will be quite impressed. Tom Schuessler 2713 Lake Gardens Drive Irving, Texas 75060 972-986-7456 214-403-1464 (Cell) n5hyp(a)arrl.net

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