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

Tony
by Clint Bradford 29 Mar '14

29 Mar '14

Tony's passing causes me to remember David Letterman asking Warren Zevon - after Zevon was diagnosed with termnal lung cancer - if there was anything Zevon understood now, facing his own mortality, that he didn't understand before. Zevon replied, "Just how much you're supposed to enjoy every sandwich." And that sums it all up. Love those around you. Always give a hug when you can. People leave us soon. Some way too soon. Clint Bradford

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Re: phasing two antennas
by Howie DeFelice 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

If you are phasing the two antennas to get 3db of gain with the same polarization, then the two cables can be any length as long as they are exactly the same electrical length. It's a good practice to make two cables from the same batch of coax if possible. - Howie

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phasing two antennas
by Lizeth Norman 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

HI all! Quick technical question. If I have a two port power divider/combiner and want to phase two alike antennas, do the two pieces of coax that connect the antennas to the power divider have to be 1 wavelength? Can they just be equal? The literature says that the divider must be fed in phase. Norm n3ykf

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Satellite Future
by Clint Bradford 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

W5PFG>> ... I cringe at the "anti-handheld in the backyard mentality" because those operators are our future ... Now THERE'S someone with the "right" attitude! Only by education at all levels/ages can this aspect of our hobby grow. Clint Bradford K6LCS http://www.work-sat.com 909-241-7666 - cell

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update on tomorrow's post-hamfest road trip
by Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Hi! After receiving some responses to my e-mail earlier this week regarding my post-hamfest road trip to southeastern Arizona (thank you to all who sent me their comments!), I plan on making the drive to the DM51/DM52 grid boundary for the late-afternoon FO-29 and VO-52 passes starting just after 0000 UTC (8pm Eastern time). There should be sufficient daylight for me to work passes up to 0200 UTC in that area, and I may stick it out through the SO-50 pass around 0223 UTC if things are calm in that area. Between not wanting to stay out there well into the night, and a drive home that will be at least 3 hours, I won't be able to work the SO-50 pass around 0400 UTC or the AO-73 passes later in the evening. I will try to post updates here on the AMSAT-BB, depending on if I can access Internet out in that area. I should be able to post updates on my @WD9EWK Twitter feed via SMS messages, which can be viewed at http://twitter.com/WD9EWK if you do not use Twitter. APRS usually has good coverage in southeastern Arizona, so I should show up on web pages like http://aprs.fi/WD9EWK-9 if you want to see where I will be. 73! Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/

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ANS-086 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin - Tony Monteiro, AA2TX SK
by JoAnne Maenpaa 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-086.01 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin - Tony Monteiro, AA2TX SK AMSAT News Service Bulletin 086.01 >From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. March 27, 2014 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-086.01 Anthony "Tony" J. Monteiro, AA2TX (SK) AMSAT VP-Engineering and Board Member Anthony J. Monteiro, AA2TX of North Andover, MA died on Wednesday morning, March 26, 2014 while hospitalized in Boston, MA from cancer. He was 55. He is survived by his wife, Mary Lou and daughter, Veronica, a college freshman. Tony was first licensed in 1973 as a Novice and subsequently held an Extra Class Amateur Radio License. An avid operator, he described his first contact in an AMSAT BoD Candidate's Statement in 2011: "I earned my novice ticket in 1973 and made my first ham radio contact with a transmitter made from parts out of an old TV set. A Heathkit HR-10B receiver and a 65-foot piece of wire strung out of a window for an antenna made up the rest of my station, which was pretty modest even by 1973 standards! Even so, I will never forget the thrill of my very first contact." His interest in amateur radio and electronics led him to earn a BS in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University and a MS in Com- puter Science from Stanford University. His professional career started at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey developing network man- agement systems and then consumer products. After working at several startup companies, Tony landed at Cisco Systems where he managed the development of ADSL, voice over packet, and content networking products. He retired from industry in 2002 and focused his efforts working on satellite projects. Tony joined AMSAT in 1994 and started working the satellites. He earned ARRL VHF/UHF Century Club-Satellite #58 and worked 49 states (only Hawaii was not logged) as well. Tony worked a number of stations while he commuted along the I-495 corridor outside Boston. Many will remember working him through AO-40 as he utilized his "cardboard box horn antenna." Tony led a workshop at the 2003 AMSAT Space Symposium where students built similar antennas, demonstrating the ease in which one could build a 2.4 GHz S-band antenna to receive the AO-40 downlink. Additional technical contributions to the amateur satellite com- munity that Tony made included "InstantTune Automatic Radio Tuning" software, "A Simple Desense Filter for Echo", and several extremely low cost projects such as "A $5 Mode V/S Adapter using a Sub-Harmonic Mixer". AMSAT-UK currently offers a 70 CM Parasitic Lindenblad antenna based upon his design. Tony also played a significant role in space-based hardware develop- ment. He collaborated on the NO-60 satellite. As AMSAT's VP-Engineer- ing, he served as the software designer for the SDX (Software Defined Transponder) on ARISSat-1/Kedr that was deployed from the Inter- national Space Station by Russian Cosmonauts during a space walk in August 2011. Tony led the Fox-1 Engineering Team from inception in 2009 and led AMSAT's efforts to apply for acceptance of Fox-1 in the NASA Education Launch of NanoSat (ELaNA) in 2011 and Fox-1B in 2012. He established relationships with several universities to secure scientific payloads for Fox-1 and Fox-1B, including student experiments. A strong proponent of student involvement in satellite projects, Tony served as coordinator of AMSAT Engineering relationships with SUNY-Binghamton, Penn State-Erie, Virginia Tech, and Rochester Institute of Technology where students developed new technologies to be applied in future AMSAT spacecraft as "Capstone" projects. These projects, such as the development of storage capacitors to replace batteries developed by SUNY-Binghamton, provided student experiences that will ultimately be flown in space. The AMSAT JOURNAL in recent years featured several articles concerning these projects. Tony was elected to the AMSAT Board of Directors in 2011 following service for one year as a BoD alternate. Him wise counsel and focus on finding ways to make it affordable for AMSAT to fly amateur radio systems in space resulted in several innovative approaches. It was Tony that convinced the NASA ELaNA program to modify their qualifi- cation criteria to add "not for profits" to those that could apply for launch grants. It was Tony that met with universities that were looking for ways to fly their payloads but didn't have the experience to build satellites, encouraging collaboration that would benefit both AMSAT and the university. Tony's approach to participation in the AMSAT Leadership Team reflect- ed his approach to life. Whenever he had a thought to share with the entire AMSAT Board of Directors and/or Senior Officers via e-mail, he always started with "Dear Friends". As AMSAT VP-Operations Drew Glas- brenner, KO4MA noted, "I always admired how he reminded me we were all friends despite whatever argument was raging." Arrangements for a service for Tony will be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT), 850 Sligo Avenue, Suite 600, Silver Spring, MD 20910. Barry A. Baines, WD4ASW President-Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT) [ANS thanks AMSAT President Barry Baines, WD4ASW for the above information] /EX

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sat-com (figured I better change the subject)
by Howie DeFelice 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

"I bet (a small bet anyway) my cell phone carrier doesn't save receive frequency data accurate enough to determine what direction I am driving though." You are probably right since the doppler shift is pretty small ( at least I hope it is :) ) on a cellphone. The satellite access is MA-TDMA so the burst timing and frequency offset need to be tracked. This is a useful performance metric when troubleshooting connectivity issues in a big network. - Howie AB2S

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those that use the sateites
by wa4hfn＠comcast.net 27 Mar '14

27 Mar '14

If you WORK the satellites and would like information about rare grids being activated, hard to find states and new countries on the birds, then you might want to join a new satellite BB Here you will find that kind of information Send Starcom-bb mailing list submissions to starcom-bb(a)star-com.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.star-com.net/listinfo/starcom-bb or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to starcom-bb-request(a)star-com.net You can reach the person managing the list at starcom-bb-owner(a)star-com.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Starcom-bb digest..." QUESTIONS contact Frank k4feg(a)k4feg.com Thanks WA4HFN Damon em55 see ya on the birds

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Re: Malaysian airliner puzzle
by Howie DeFelice 27 Mar '14

27 Mar '14

I idid some checking on www.satellite-calculations.com and was surprised at what I found. SAT LOCATION INCLINATION 3-F1 64E 1.67 deg 3-F2 15W 0.21 deg 3-F3 178E 1.07 deg 3-F4 54W 3.6 deg 3-F5 24E 0.39 deg 4-F1 143E 2.67 deg 4-F2 24E 2.34 deg 4-F3 98W 3.01 deg 2-F2 142W 9.33 deg I didn't expect some of the older 3rd generation satellites to have lower inclinations than the newer 4th generations sats considering that the newer sats use scanning spot beam technology. It might have something to do with customer lease requirements since INMARSAT will lease excess capacity users, but that's only a guess. As to the question about retaining the data, you can think of it as meta data similar to what the cellphone carriers collect about cellphone calls. They don't record and save you conversations but they do record information about origination, destination,time, duration and type of call. This information is collected and logged automatically in most cases. - Howie

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LituanicaSAT-1: President's greetings message sent from space
by M5AKA 27 Mar '14

27 Mar '14

President's greetings message sent from space http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/27/presidents-greetings-message-sent-from-space/ RAG 2014 May 17 UK National Space Center – Demonstrations, Posters and Tickets http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/27/rag-2014-demonstrations-posters-and-tickets/ Ofcom Consultation: 146-147 MHz for Amateur Radio use in UK http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/24/ofcom-consultation-146-147-mhz-for-amateur-r… PRN codes for KickSat Sprites released http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/23/prn-codes-for-kicksat-sprites-released/ KickSat Sprite launch postponed http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/009/140327delay/ ---- Trevor M5AKA AMSAT-UK Website http://amsat-uk.org/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/AMSAT-UK/208113275898396 Twitter https://twitter.com/AMSAT_UK ----

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