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

The Force is Strong with NASA's Smartphone-Powered Satellite
by Trevor . 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

See article at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/spheres_smartphone.html 73 Trevor M5AKA Daily Amateur Radio Email/RSS News: http://www.southgatearc.org/ Email Your News To: editor at southgatearc.org Or Upload At: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/your_news_1.htm ----

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OM3BD now qrv sats, JN89 possible on Sunday
by Bill Dzurilla 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

Thanks to all who have emailed and requested skeds with me from JN88 in Slovakia. After a series of rig and antenna issues, I am now back on the sats, with several QSOs today with good reports. I will try to make a test AO-7 run tomorrow when I have a common footprint with North America. If all goes well, I will take my rig and a 70cm antenna with me for the weekend when I go the the OM1HQ club station in JN89 for the IARU contest on HF. They have a 2m beam at the club. Those of you who worked me last year in JN88 should be on the lookout Sunday if you want this new grid. No promises or skeds yet, with the bad luck I've been having anything can happen. But I still have more than 3 weeks left here and hope to have some sat contacts with North America. Last year, best DX was Ohio to the west and Virginia to the south. 73, Bill NZ5N/OM3BD

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computer crash
by Bruce 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

i back up email to a network attached storage device every 5 hours, all data every night and clone the drive every 2-3 days. i will lose nothing but a bit of time. so i am good. by the way, without the computer there will be no echolink or internet streaming of the houston amsat net this week. sorry about that but s... happens. instead i am going out to dinner with the family. 73...bruce Sent from my iPhone

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Field Day reminder
by Bruce 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

Monday, July 11, 2011 at 23:59 Central Time is the deadline for submission of your field day summaries. I am going to be a bit delayed in processing the results as my computer decided to die. Most likely the processor (Intel Core 2). I ordered a new computer today. It will probably arrive around Thursday or Friday. I can still check my mail on another computer. Yippie, just love migrating... hopefully, using the old hard drive and then loading the new drivers will go smoothly. 73...bruce

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Russian kocmoc
by Bob DeVarney W1ICW 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

just me chiming in again. I have kocmoc award number 51-RS and can find no dash number typed on mine, but then I have it matted (poorly ) in a frame which might have cut it off a bit. Mine is dated Sept 12 1998. I also have the ZRO award dated January 1995, only ever got down to level 4 on mode B, was working on further shack enhancements when I either got married or the satellite died, or maybe a bit of both. Very proud of this award, even if my level is somewhat trifling compared to level 8 My prized possession is a Special Event QSL from W5RRR for the Apollo 11th 25th Anniversary on July 19-22, 1994. I worked them the last pass over the US, last couple hours of the pass, and I was the last station to work them before the satellite ( AO-21 )switched modes to transmit wefax images. I was working it portable, with a Bearcat scanner with preamp for reception, a Kenwood TH-78 HT driving the gutted final from a Motorola UHF Micor and a 12 element yagi on a camera tripod for the uplink. How many others worked this Special Event Station, or remember the different modes of AO-21? Looking at the dust covered walls here I see I was extremely active in sats in the mid to late 1990s; very little since. Some of that I can blame on getting married about that time. Some I cannot. It's easy to sigh and wish for the "good old days" but I think that memory is always sweeter and if we looked more closely the good old days weren't always so good. I for one would not want to go back to manual tracking and doppler correction like I had back then .. I finally upgraded to an AEA ST-1 and The Station Program by VP9MU some time around 1997 if I remember. The availability of cheap solid state power FETS is pretty darn cool too.. a single FET 1200 watt amplifier for two meters really tickles me pink.. working on one now for my EME station.. So maybe we'll look back on THESE as the good old days. I have some very well thumbed issues of Orbits magazine, the forerunner to AMSAT Journal from when I first got licensed in 1981. I see they were pretty excited to be building AO-10 back then, and commemorating the third launch anniversary of Oscar-8. Very cool stuff indeed. 73 all, Bob W1ICW

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FAST2
by John Ronan 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

Hi, Surprisingly I received a beacon from FAST2 this morning. I've seen posts to indicate that it is slightly high in frequency, does anyone know if this is the case? Regards John EI7IG

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Re: Russian KOSMOS award?
by K5OE 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

Congrats, John. You were #8. > I'm looking at my KOCMOC, it says No. 8-1 CT. 12 December 99. > I can't remember what the levels of achievement were. I was at > "Step 1". > And it was one of the hand-delivered ones! Step 1 was for 100 contacts Step 2 was for 200 contacts Step 3 was for 300 contacts They all look exactly the same except or the -1, -2, or -3 typed in at the bottom. Now back to 40 m and the IARU HF contest... 73, Jerry

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Re: FM satellites
by Gordon JC Pearce 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

On Thu, 7 Jul 2011 17:04:29 -0400 Joseph Armbruster <josepharmbruster(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Gordon, > > That's interesting! I live down in Florida and had no clue that some of > those towers were powered by diesel! > > Do you know how many gallons (or liters) it takes to run the tower for a > week? > > Joseph Armbruster > KJ4JIO The tank on site near the high site I was working on last week is about the same size as my 1300 litre heating oil tank. It's a 10kVA genny, somewhere around 2 litres per hour, and it gets topped up every two weeks. A rough back-of-an-envelope calculation gives about three and a half weeks running time to dry, not allowing for any load-shedding. Presumably you could knock down the RAN output power, or drop off one of the microwave links if you needed to save a bit of fuel. Gordon MM0YEQ

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Russian KOSMOS award?
by Bob DeVarney W1ICW 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

I am wondering how many Russian KOSMOS awards have been/were issued? Anybody have any info on them? I was cleaning the shack up and after dusting off the walls, I noticed mine from 1998 with number 51-RS on it. I know N1JEZ has one with a similar number on his. Anybody have any idea if they still issue the award? Are they still issuing the JARL FUJI Award or the SA-AMSAT award and more? I might have some real dinosaurs here on my walls... 73 de W1ICW Alias Cro-Magnon man

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STS-136 TLE
by Clint Bradford 09 Jul '11

09 Jul '11

TLEs for STS 135 now on CelesTrak. Clint Bradford

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