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

AO-51 QRM gone?, back to .88 up
by Andrew Glasbrenner 27 May '11

27 May '11

Thanks to many folks, especially K8YSE and KE4KOL, it looks like we may have scared off whomever was squatting on the 880 uplink. Starting this afternoon we will give it another try, 145.880 up, and 435.150 down. This was the most common uplink historically with this downlink, so I'd like for it to be the default in these post-battery failure operations. 73, Drew KO4MA AMSAT-NA VP Operations

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Re: Interference on AO-51 145.88 uplink
by Don Hoover (WS4E) 27 May '11

27 May '11

After seeing the recent post by Drew about interference from AO-51 on 145.880 coming from a Louisville repeater, as the president of the ham club in Louisville, I forwarded the posting from Drew out to the membership. Here is some info I received from some members: >I listened to the audio track. The call letters of the interfering signal is KB4PTJ. >This repeater is located in Shelbyville, KY and operates on 444.050 TX/449.050RX >with a PL of 91.5, and is associated with its companion repeater located in Williamsburg, KY (also 444.050/PL >100.0) and linked via the Internet to several repeaters around the eastern US. I know of one in Virginia and another >in New Jersey. > > >The owner is: Will Jones, a HVAC contractor who lives in the Williamsburg/Corbin area. >He may well be interested that his repeater audio is interfering with the AO-51 Satellite. >Will is very knowledgeable and would want to do right by the situation. My guess, is that since this is a 70cm repeater, the chances of it actually emitting on 145mhz are pretty slim. My bet is on a rouge cross-band repeater by someone who picked a 'clear frequency'. I have been monitoring the frequency and it seems quiet. If it comes up again we can organize a foxhunt to locate and educate the owner. After seeing the recent post by Drew about interference from AO-51 on 145.880 coming from a Louisville repeater, as the president of the ham club in Louisville, I forwarded the posting from Drew out to the membership mailing list. Here is some info I received from some club members in response: >I listened to the audio track. The call letters of the interfering signal is KB4PTJ. >This repeater is located in Shelbyville, KY and operates on 444.050 TX/449.050RX >with a PL of 91.5, and is associated with its companion repeater located in Williamsburg, KY (also 444.050/PL >100.0) and linked via the Internet to several repeaters around the eastern US. I know of one in Virginia and another >in New Jersey. > > >The owner is: Will Jones, a HVAC contractor who lives in the Williamsburg/Corbin area. >He may well be interested that his repeater audio is interfering with the AO-51 Satellite. >Will is very knowledgeable and would want to do right by the situation. My guess, is that since this is a 70cm repeater, the chances of it actually emitting on 145.880 mhz are pretty slim. My bet is on a rouge cross-band repeater by someone who picked what they thought was a 'clear frequency'. I have been monitoring the frequency here in Louisville and it seems quiet now. If it comes up again we can organize a foxhunt to track it down and educate the owner. --- Don Hoover WS4E(a)arrl.net President, Amateur Radio Transmitting Society of Louisville http://www.w4cn.org

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Robin Harvey G4BBR SK
by Trevor . 27 May '11

27 May '11

Robin Harvey G4BBR died on the morning of Tuesday, May 23, in the Sue Ryder Home, Leckhampton, Cheltenham after a long illness. Active in the early days of Amateur Satellites he was AMSAT Life Member 445 and a keen Oscar 7 operator. In the 1970's he was a Member of the Borderers VHF Contest Group, GW4ABR/P, sometimes also called The Golden Valley VHF Contest Group. They acheived the 1st G4 +3, 2m Award and the 1st G4 + 3, 4m Award. Robin spent 2 years National Service in the Royal Signals, Germany, then back to the General Post Office (GPO), then the UK Government company running all postal and telecommunications. After that he was in the Army at Boddington for a couple of years where he Commissioned STRAD, Signal Transmission, Reception and Automatic Distribution (Electronic Telegraph switching system) for the Army. He then joined the Foreign Office in the late 1960s in Cheltenham where he stayed until he retired a few years ago. His funeral will take place on Wednesday June 1 at 2.30pm at Cheltenham Crematorium, South Chapel. 73 Trevor M5AKA

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VUCC, LoTW at Dayton?
by Ted 26 May '11

26 May '11

Does anyone who was at Dayton, and talked to the ARRL, have any info/feedback to share? TNX, Ted, K7TRK

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Interference on AO-51 145.88 uplink
by George Henry 26 May '11

26 May '11

There are 4 ARRL-affiliated radio clubs listed for the Louisville area... has anyone tried contacting one of them for assistance in finding & shutting down the offending repeater? George, KA3HSW

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Re: Widest split of the year award
by Andrew Glasbrenner 26 May '11

26 May '11

We just replace the microphone on skype with a line from the accessory jack at a fixed level, or you can go thru an interface like a rigblaster. There are others on this list that run full remote on voice...I haven't gotten that far. It's mainly a tool for commanding for me so far. 73, Drew -----Original Message----- >From: "Ng, Peter" <Peter.Ng(a)bccdc.ca> >Sent: May 26, 2011 6:47 PM >To: 'Andrew Glasbrenner' <glasbrenner(a)mindspring.com>, Zachary Beougher <zack.kd8ksn(a)hotmail.com> >Cc: "<amsat-bb(a)amsat.org>" <amsat-bb(a)amsat.org> >Subject: RE: [amsat-bb] Re: Widest split of the year award > >>>I did, but my home station wasn't part of it this time. Up from the office and down from Mark's via Skype. > >Hi Drew, this is very interesting. Do you just decode the audio directly from Skype? Just curious, is it possible to remote uplink as well? > >73's Peter VE7NGP

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Widest split of the year award
by Zachary Beougher 26 May '11

26 May '11

Drew, KO4MA, gets the “widest split of the year award” for his operation on AO51 this evening – uplink from his home station in FL via remote, and downlink from N8MH’s QTH in NC. I wonder if anyone else could mount their receive and transmit setups 547.17 miles apart? Or to put it in terms that you are more likely to deal with when assembling your station, 34,668,746.87 inches apart. 73! Zack KD8SKN

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Re: AO-51 Status
by Zachary Beougher 26 May '11

26 May '11

Forgot to CC the BB... Zack -----Original Message----- From: Zachary Beougher Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 5:30 PM To: Andrew Glasbrenner Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Re: AO-51 Status Hi Drew & group, John posted a recording on his website that recorded the repeater ID, but the audio is very faint. Here is the recording (repeater IDs @ 3:20): http://www.papays.com/sat/AO-51_18May2011_224233z.mp3 or go here: http://www.papays.com/sat/general.html I listened to it over and over and it sounds like a KE4PPT/PPJ, but I checked and neither of those is correct. Maybe someone else would have a different idea. 73, Zack KD8KSN -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Glasbrenner Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 3:02 PM To: Ng,Peter ; AMSAT BB ; 'Clint Bradford' Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: AO-51 Status >AO-51 Control Team members, you are amazing! Thank you! > >73's Peter VE7NGP Thanks guys. It's truly great to have a team like we have in the AO-51 command team. Let me relate a few things about AO-51 and where we are headed. Cell 3 has reversed, or shorted. Without the ability to record WOD through eclipse, we can't tell for sure. Personally I think it has reversed, but regardless, the computer that runs AO-51 crashes every eclipse now. We are reloading the small housekeeping program stored on the satellite from ROM each pass, then turning the repeater on, setting the modulation level and turning the power down. We are working on automating this process, and when that is done, we'll expand the geographical areas. It's going to take time, and there is the distinct possibility that further deterioration may occur before we can get everything in place, and what little ops we have left will cease. Right now the repeater is only being enabled on afternoon passes over the US, as a command station is available. However, we are letting it stay on past our LOS, so stations in Asia may hear it active still on the descending morning passes there. Over the weekend, I was not able to attend the Dayton hamfest :-( . I wanted to make sure the satellite was available for the AMSAT demonstrations there by Keith, Roger, and Mark, but I was also not going to be home! Most of the passes were enabled via a combination of remoting in to my home station via an Iphone and Logmein Ignition, and listening off the air while parked in various rural North Florida locations. This was a challenge, especially outside of wifi and 3G service! Further complicating the issue is the repeater in the Louisville KY area operating on the 145.88 uplink. This necessitated the change on the fly to 145.920 up, as the repeater was drowning out the demo guys at Dayton. Fortunately we have some excellent help in tracking this down, so Mark, Kevin, and I can concentrate on keeping the repeater running. If you know who is responsible for this repeater, please let us know. We've not gotten a solid ID from it, but it has a digital voice ID, a morse S courtesy tone, and a PL of 91.5. It may be a link, but is likely a repeater output. Just a quick update to let everyone know where we stand. 73, Drew KO4MA AMSAT-NA VP Operations PS Thanks for all the donations for Fox and Arissat over the last week! If you haven't yet donated, drop by www.amsat.org, or call Martha at 1 888 322 6728 today and help us get Fox in space. _______________________________________________ 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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Office Closed
by Martha 26 May '11

26 May '11

In observance of Memorial Day, I will be out of the office Friday, May 27- May 31st. Will be back in the office on Wednesday, June 1. Have a safe holiday. -- 73- Martha

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Fwd: [funcube] Don't forget the FUNcube dongle is on sale today!
by Mark L. Hammond 26 May '11

26 May '11

FYI! 73, Mark N8MH ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: m0tfo <robpegs(a)hotmail.com> Date: Thu, May 26, 2011 at 2:05 PM Subject: [funcube] Don't forget the FUNcube dongle is on sale today! To: funcube(a)yahoogroups.co.uk The FUNcube dongle Pro will be on sale this evening (21:00UTC.) The sale times are now lasting longer,so this is the best time to grab yourself an SDR dongle. Order here:http://www.funcubedongle.com/?page_id=286 Q. What is the frequency range? A. 64-1,700MHz, although straw poll tests on pre-production units indicate that units can be stretched down to 51.5MHz or so. Upper frequency limit is beyond 2,000MHz. In testing, we have determined that there is a gap between about 1,100MHz and 1,270MHz where the design of the local oscillator VCO, PLL and divider chain in the tuner chip don't provide seemless coverage. Q. What can the FUNcube Dongle receive? A. The FUNcube Dongle has no restriction on modulation schemes: it is limited only by the application program running on the host computer. As long as the signal fits within about an 80kHz bandwidth, the FUNcube Dongle is capable of receiving the radio signal. So, for analogue reception, as well as narrow band FM and SSB, it is also possible to receive, for example, sound subcarriers for TV broadcast. Similarly for data reception, as long as a data demodulator has been written that will accept standard soundcard quadrature I/Q reception, that will work too. Q. What is the bandwidth? A. 96kHz is the quadrature sampling rate. Once the ADC's decimation filter skirts have been taken into account, you have about 80kHz. Q. What applications work with the FUNcube Dongle? A. As well as the forthcoming FUNcube front end application, any application that understands a standard stereo soundcard configured for quadrature, or I/Q, reception should work. Examples include Linrad, Spectravue, Rocky and M0KGK. Q. What is the sensitivity? A. Each unit is tested for 0.15uV for 12dB SINAD NBFM at 145MHz and 435MHz. Q. What operating systems are compatible? A. Currently Windows 2000 SP4, XP 32 bit, and Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit have been tested. The sound card element works with Mac OSX and Ubuntu 10.10 32 and 64 bit, but the frequency setting application has not been ported yet. Q. What's the difference between versions? A. There are two versions, the Base and the Pro models. The Base model is frequency restricted and designed as an entry level minimal cost device, targetted for educational outreach. The Pro model is unrestricted in its frequency coverage. Q. Can I upgrade a "Base" version to a "Pro" version? A. At present, the upgrade will require a return of the device so that it can be modified to accept "Pro" firmware. Q. Is the firmware upgradeable? A. Yes, already the devices can have their firmware upgraded in a matter of a few seconds by the user. However, Pro firmware and Base firmware are not interchangeable. Q. Do I need front end filters? A. Some people have experienced front end overloading with the FCD at VHF in particular. Although there is fixed and programmable front end filtering already on the FCD, at VHF it's not very selective. Typically the symptom is that it will appear deaf: this is the noise floor rising due to an overloaded front end. You can see this in Spectravue as when you plug in the antenna the noise floor rises potentially several tens of dB. Although reducing gain can help, of course innevitably this is at the expense of the unit's native sensitivity. At this stage it is worth pursuing external filtering options. We're working on some solutions already, but some readily available commercial solutions include Hamtronics' LNP preselector, SSB Electronics SP-2000, and DCI's DCI-145-2H and DCI-145-4H. As these are not exactly cheap, I have been working on some ideas here that you may like to try: http://www.funcubedongle.com/?p=456. We're also investigating at a reasonably priced active no-tune solution. Rob M0TFO

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