March 2014 - AMSAT-BB - mailman.amsat.org

Soyuz Lands Safely
by Clint Bradford 11 Mar '14

11 Mar '14

March 10, 2014 NASA RELEASE 14-072 Space Station Crew Returns to Earth, Lands Safely in Kazakhstan Three crew members from the International Space Station returned to Earth Monday after 166 days in space, during which they made 2,656 orbits around the planet and traveled almost 70.5 million miles Expedition 38 crew members Michael Hopkins of NASA, and Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at about 11:24 p.m. EDT (9:24 a.m., March 11, in Dzhezkazgan). /end/

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AMSAT @ Scottsdale AZ Springfest hamfest on 15 March
by Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) 11 Mar '14

11 Mar '14

Hi! I will have an AMSAT table at the Scottsdale Amateur Radio Club's annual Springfest hamfest on Saturday, 15 March 2014. The hamfest will be at the Mountain Valley Church, on Perimeter Drive north of Princess Drive and west of the AZ-101 freeway in Scottsdale. This was the location of the hamfest in 2012. A map of the location is available at: http://scottsdalearc.org/springfest-our-version-of-a-swap/springfest-2014/s… The hamfest is scheduled to run from 0600 (1300 UTC) to 1200 (1900 UTC). More information about the hamfest is available at: http://scottsdalearc.org/springfest-our-version-of-a-swap/ http://scottsdalearc.org/springfest-our-version-of-a-swap/springfest-2014/2… During the hamfest, I will have some on-air demonstrations working different satellites. For this hamfest, I will not work the passes as WD9EWK, but as W1AW/7 as part of the ARRL centennial commemoration. These QSOs will be uploaded to LOTW by ARRL, and ARRL will handle the QSLing. I will also copy telemetry from AO-73 (FUNcube-1) and upload it in real time to the FUNcube data warehouse server, using my FUNcube Dongle Pro+ and Elk 2m/70cm log periodic as that satellite passes overhead. 73! Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/

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W1AW/7 from Arizona, starting Wednesday 0000 UTC
by Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) 11 Mar '14

11 Mar '14

Hi! Starting tomorrow (Wednesday 0000 UTC, or 8pm Eastern time Tuesday evening), W1AW/7 will be on the air from Arizona. If you want to work this call on the HF bands and in different modes on those bands, there is a nice schedule posted at: http://www.n7cw.com/Schedule.html Satellite activity is not listed on that page, as I am managing the satellite activity on behalf of the coordinators of the Arizona W1AW/7 activity (Ned AA7A and Bud N7CW). John K8YSE, operating his K8YSE/7 station from DM43 in the Phoenix area, and I will be on the satellites as W1AW/7 during the upcoming week. Please give us a call, and get in the log. As with the other W1AW/x activity, ARRL will be handling the QSLing as listed on their web site, and QSOs will also be uploaded to LOTW. Among other times, I will use W1AW/7 for demonstrations at the Scottsdale Amateur Radio Club's Springfest hamfest on Saturday (15 March) morning instead of my own call. I will try to get on the birds in the weeknights, and at other times on the weekend in addition to the hamfest. K8YSE will be on other passes as W1AW/7 using his Arizona station, based on his availability. If there are other satellite operators who can operate from Arizona and want to help with this state's W1AW/7 effort on the satellites, please contact me directly. Thanks, and 73! Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/

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WTB Icom AG-35 preamp
by Bob Mattaliano 11 Mar '14

11 Mar '14

If anyone has an Icom AG-35 preamp in good shape they are willing to sell, please contact me. TKS es 73, Bob

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[CAUTION] The Satellite ID of CelesTrack is wrong!
by Akihiro Kubota 11 Mar '14

11 Mar '14

dear amsat-bb members, hello. many people ask us that the CW of our new cubesat INVADER can not be received. this is because the satellite id of CelesTrack is wrong. http://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/tle-new.txt the real data is INVADER = 39577U 14009F. we already send the measurement data of doppler shift to CelesTrack. i hope they will correct data ASAP. http://artsat.jp/en/news/invader%E3%81%AE%E8%A1%9B%E6%98%9F%E3%82%AB%E3%82%… anyway, please use the TLE of 39577U 14009F (ITF 1) in order to receive the CW of INVADER. thanks in advance. all the best, ARTSAT project leader akihiro kubota

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K&R Yoksh
by K&R Yoksh 10 Mar '14

10 Mar '14

http://thelanguageconsultants.com/jcg/fox-news.php K&R Yoksh

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Talk to Luca!
by Clint Bradford 10 Mar '14

10 Mar '14

Did you follow ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano’s updates and images during his Volare space mission on social media? Now there’s a chance to hear about his time on the International Space Station directly from Luca. ESA is inviting 50 followers of @Astro_Luca to join us for a SocialSpace event, open to all his followers on social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. The event will take place on 11 April at ESA’s ESRIN facility in Frascati, Italy, starting at 16:00 CEST (in English). Complete the application at ... http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Volare/Meet_astronaut_L… ... and good luck on being chosen! Clint K6LCS http://www.hamradioprogramming.com

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Fwd: [CubeSat] Announcement from George Washington University - On-orbit Micropropulsion eXperiment Program (OMXP)
by Samudra Haque [GWU] 10 Mar '14

10 Mar '14

[Hi, I am sending this note to all local mailing lists I am a part of, to allow small satellite enthusiasts / experimenters to take advantage of our research work at GWU. Perhaps you could forward it to your friendly neighborhood educational institution and affiliate looking for a method to put up long duration missions in space - and in most probability head past Low Earth Orbit within a decent time frame - referrals requested - Samudra N3RDX ] 3/10/2014 On behalf of the Micro-propulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory, and Dr. Michael Keidar, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at George Washington University, I am attaching the formal announcement of OMXP. I hope all of you will consider making use of this innovative program from our laboratory to enable your institution's CubeSat projects to include one or more channels of small form, efficient and safer electric propulsion subsystem at very low cost. If you are interested to know more details, or wish to discuss specialized applications of (electric) micro-propulsion in CubeSats, please follow the contact instructions in the attached PDF. We are in the process of setting up an online application portal soon. Regards to all. -- Samudra Haque Ph.D Student Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering George Washington University

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OSCAR NEWS #205
by Graham Shirville 10 Mar '14

10 Mar '14

Hi All, The next edition of OSCAR NEWS from AMSAT-UK is being prepared for publication right now. If you have any news or opinions that you would like to share please let us have some text in the next ten days so that it may be included. We are happy to accept articles of almost any length and we can deal with most formats. With all the many new launches that have taken place in the recent weeks there must be many stories to tell and lessons learnt to share. Thanks in advance 73 Graham G3VZV and Jim G3WGM Interim editors of OSCAR NEWS

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OSCAR-11 Report
by Clive Wallis 10 Mar '14

10 Mar '14

OSCAR-11 30th BIRTHDAY REPORT OSCAR-11 (AKA UoSAT-2 and UO-11) celebrated it's 30th birthday in space on 01 March! It was designed, built and launched within a period of six months, using commercially available 'off the shelf' components (COTS). Once again, congratulations to Professor Sir Martin Sweeting G3YJO, his team at the University of Surrey and the groups of radio amateurs who also contributed to the project. This report covers the period from 01 January 2013 to 05 March 2014. During this time there have been no significant changes apart from the gradual drift of the on-board clock. There was also an advance of one day in the displayed date. This was caused by a known leap year problem in the date chip, which has always existed since launch. Owing to the large accumulated time/date error 29 February 2012 on the satellite occurred in January 2013 on earth! The satellite has been transmitting on a regular cycle of 10.35 days on followed by 10.35 days off. Good copy has been obtained obtained from decoded telemetry frames and many reports have been posted on the DCARR general satellite status website, The satellite continues to be subjected to eclipses during each orbit, resulting in weaker signals at those times. During the winter in the UK the evening passes were in the earth's shadow, and very weak signals have been received, which could not be demodulated and could be only detected with the receiver in CW mode . As the longer daylight hours of summer approach, the evening passes in the UK should gradually become clear of eclipses, resulting in stronger signals. Eclipses are expected to continue until 2019. The on-board clock gained 98 seconds during the 14 month reporting period, which is comparable with the 60 seconds gain per year when the satellite was launched. There is however a large accumulated error of 307.54090 days slow. This was caused mainly by the clock stopping during eclipses, when there was also an unknown drain on the power supply. The units of the least significant digit correspond approximately to seconds (0.86 seconds actually). At the present time, while OSCAR-11 is operating in a predictable way, please DO NOT send reports or files by e-mail. However, could all listeners continue to enter their reports on the general satellite status website. This is a very convenient and easy to use facility, which shows the current status of all the amateur satellites, and is of use to everyone. Reports around the expected times of switch-on and switch-off are of special interest, especially for times 13:00 to 18:00 and 22:00 to 08:00 UTC, to when the satellite is out-of-range in the UK . The URL is http://oscar.dcarr.org/index.php The VHF beacon frequency is 145.826 MHz. AFSK FM ASCII Telemetry. The satellite is operating in the default mode, controlled by the watchdog timer, with a cycle time of 20.7 days. 10.35 days on followed by 10.35 days off. An extended version of this report is available on my website, and new listeners to OSCAR-11 should read this for further information. The URL is www.g3cwv.co.uk/oscar11.htm . This page contains links to the report, a short audio clip to help you identify the satellite and a file of recent telemetry received. The website also contains an archive of news & telemetry data which is updated from time to time, and details about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture. There is also software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry. The easiest way to check whether OSCAR-11 is operational is to look at the General Satellite Status website http://oscar.dcarr.org/index.php . If you place this bulletin on a terrestrial packet network, please use the bulletin identifier $BID:U2RPT159.CWV, to prevent duplication. 73 Clive G3CWV xxxxx(a)amsat.org (please replace the x's by g3cwv)

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