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

5 in em55
by wa4hfn＠comcast.net 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

Just in KD8CAO has 5 in em55 award # 55 Good job Doug WA4HFN em55 Damon www.starcommgroup.org Please accept my log submission for the 5 in EM55 award. WA4NVM 6/4/2011 2103z FM AO-7 U/V WB4LHD 6/28/2011 2208z FM AO-51 V/U KD4NOQ 7/5/2011 0132z SSB VO-52 U/V K4FEG 8/10/2011 2158z FM AO-51 V/U W1AW/4 9/3/2014 2323z SSB FO-29 V/U ARS KD8CAO

1 0

5 in em55 award
by wa4hfn＠comcast.net 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

congrats to Omar XE1OA 5 in em55 award # 54 Good job Omar WA4HFN em55 Damon www.starcommgroup.org

1 0

Lindenblads
by Robin Midgett 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Hello to the group, I'd like to hear from any users of the Lindenblad antennas regarding switching polarity & circularity. Based on the article on the AMSAT web page by W6SHP at http://www.amsat.org/amsat/articles/w6shp/lindy.html, I'm led to believe that the maximum effect comes from having one Lindy for each of RHCP & LHCP per band in addition to being able to invert the polarity of each. I'd like to hear from users concerning how often switching between RH & LH circularity yields benefits as compared to switching polarity on a single Lindy. I've long had an interest in satellite operation. Due to being involved with a recent ARISS event, the interest level has been elevated..it's time for me to get on the birds. I welcome your input regarding the Lindenblad antennas.

6 6

New AMSAT-NA BOD
by Clint Bradford 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Congratulations to the newly elected AMSAT-NA board members. Clint K6LCS

1 0

Results of 2014 AMSAT-NA Board of Directors Election
by Alan 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

Board of Directors Election - 2014 As a result of the 2014 AMSAT-NA Board of Directors Election the following members were elected to serve for two years: Tom Clark, K3IO; JoAnne Maenpaa, K9JKM; and Lou McFadin, W5DID. Jerry Buxton, N0JY will serve the remaining year of SK Tony Monteiro, AA2TX's term. The First Alternate is Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, and the Second Alternate is Frank Griffin, K4FEG. The results of the voting with 635 ballots cast are as follows: Tom Clark, K3IO........................457 JoAnne Maenpaa, K9JKM..........439 Lou McFadin, W5DID.................421 Jerry Buxton, N0JY.....................268 Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA........261 Frank Griffin, K4FEG...................232 Steve Coy, K8UD........................178 Bryan Klofas, KF6ZEO.................132 Submitted by Martha Saragovitz Manager ----------------------------------------------

1 0

CN-73 update
by Lee Ernstrom 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

Having never worked through FO-29 until the 15th of this month I am pleased to say that it was pretty easy to access and make contacts. On the 01:21 UTC pass on the 15th my first QSO was with W5PFG, and then W1AW/5, KG6NUB, and AC0RA. This morning on the 13:22 UTC pass I worked NM3B, K4FEG, N8RO, N5JF, WA4NVM, N5UXT, XE2BHL, and XE1AO. My rig is the FT-897D and the antenna is a tripod mounted Arrow. This is the set up I will use while in CN-73 next week. Early Saturday morning we will drive to Portland, Oregon where we will spend the night with my XYL's sister, and sometime on Sunday we will head down the coast where we will end up in Bandon By The Sea that evening. I don't know if I will have time to make any attempts on the satellite Sunday evening, but my plans are to be ready for the Monday morning passes. At the suggestion do Wyatt, AC0RA, I will be transmitting on 145.935 and listening somewhat higher than 435.850 so as to not interfere with stations operating in the middle of the band. Remember that I am extremely green at this, operating through a linear transponder, so don't be surprised if I goof up from time to time. Please email me if you have any suggestions and/or advice. See ya on the bird! Lee (Doc) Ernstrom, WA7HQD Sent from my iPad

1 0

Glitch
by Martha 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

The glitch at the Double Tree has been fixed. There are rooms available so don't hesitate and call now! -- 73- Martha

2 1

G0SFJ Telemetry equipment and project
by andy thomas 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

Hi Jerry -You asked about stations receiving telemetry so I thought I'd respond. Maybe the wider community will be interested so I have decided to copy this to the -bb - hope you don't mind. Current Motivation Currently in my retirement I'm a PhD student interested in the popular cultural discourse or practice of space exploration, and see qsl cards as records of this cultural discourse from an identified cohort who have access to space exploration. (You might like to see my recent abstract at www.cosmographies.co.uk) . The approach is based on Foucault/Derrida etc but I won't go on about that here. As well as this PhD work, I keep an archive or collection of cards and certificates about amateur satellites (broad definition) and obviously these cards are my own interactions. Mostly at the moment they are from the owners of telemetry-emitting cubesats, although my own mini-dx expeditions on the Fm birds are also recorded. Therefore, what motivates me is to record the interaction - therefore I am biassed at the moment towards receiving and donating telemetry data that will result in some sort of record. My archive goes back to the 1990s. In the future I have at the back of my mind an idea to reflect on this archive, but haven't decided how yet. Current equipment My equipment is simple in that I do not have an az-el rotator. I think that is an expensive hiding to nothing as I've seen many reports about failure of this piece of kit. For my work it's not necessary. I receive data according to the method I have outlined within the BIS "Kicksat" project - see: http://kicksat.wordpress.com/support/kicksat-ground-station/ if it's still there. I do have an ICOM IC-910 and I have recorded most of my transactions with it at my personal website http://www.andythomas.eu . This website (andythomasorg) as hosted by google is indexed in the Britsh Library catalogue under "popular science". New direction I have moved into using a Fun Cube Dongle Pro+ and sdr# to give a visual account of the telemetry - see for example my Polyitan-1 page on my website. I now calibrate the FCD Pro+ using an 80MHz TTL Oscillator on the desk, so the images will be precise as to time and rf frequency. I suppose that in this regard I am conscious of initiatives such as ARTSAT. Sign-off I hope that's given you some insight into the tremendous cultural potential of amateur satellites, and will encourage designers on the -bb to contnue to offer some acknowldgement certificate or card or something interactive, so that the significance of our efforts can be widely understood and appreciated. 73 de andy G0SFJ

1 0

IARU Region 1 conference + OSCAR News published
by M5AKA 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

The key IARU Region 1 conference takes place in Albena, Bulgaria September 21-27. Important issues being discussed will include an amateur satellite allocation at 144.0-144.025 MHz as well as the 23 cm band and WRC-2018 http://amsat-uk.org/2014/08/13/23-cm-band-and-wrc-2018/ The AMSAT-UK publication OSCAR News issue 207 was released last week http://amsat-uk.org/2014/09/16/oscar-news-issue-207/ ---- Trevor M5AKA AMSAT-UK Website http://amsat-uk.org/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/amsatuk Twitter https://twitter.com/AMSAT_UK ----

1 0

ESTCube-1 experiment: first steps
by Tõnis Eenmäe 16 Sep '14

16 Sep '14

Hello all, I'm glad to announce that after more than a year of preparations, tomorrow, 16.09.2014, we are starting to deploy the electric solar sail tether on-board ESTCube-1. The process of burning the tether end-mass and spool locks and reeling out the first few centimeters of tether will start during the 09.06 - 09.19Z pass over Estonia. This is a high pass and should be visible over most of the Europe. The next good passes listed below (all in UTC) will be used to download images the telemetry logs and the images: 10.43 - 10.56 18.39 - 18.51 20.15 - 20.28 During the locks release process and after reeling the tether out some centimeters, images will be taken. The other shorter passes during the day will be used to download the experiment data as quickly as possible (in Estonia, all daily passes are visible, but lowest ones are just couple of degrees above the northern horizon). If everything is OK with the tether, additional unreeling will take place in coming days. If you are interested in receiving ESTCube-1 during those exciting passes, the UZ7HO 9600 bps packet softmodem and an Online Telemetry Decoder by Mike Rupprecht (http://www.dk3wn.info/files/estcube_online.zip) can be used. But basically any 9600 bps G3RUH TNC or decoder can be used to receive ESTCube-1. We are looking forward to receiving your reports on the address es5e AT estcube DOT eu, and we would really appreciate if you would also send received data in live, using Mike's decoder. With best wishes, Tõnis Eenmäe de ES5TF

2 1