July 2018 - AMSAT-BB - mailman.amsat.org

You can't go wrong with AO-91 and AO-92 (U/V FM)
by k6vug＠sbcglobal.net 15 Jul '18

15 Jul '18

I guess I feel bad for the few hams here and on the air who seem to find it difficult to get on these amazing birds. Below is a link to an ultra-portable ultra light weight setup for working these birds with a HT (4 watts). The Duplexer is zip tied on the short center boom and the coax is just some RG-8X. A set of short (24 inch) home-brew Yagis are set at fixed elevation of about 30 degrees, and don't need any phase angle rotation. The camera mount center rod was replaced with a 1/2 inch PVC pipe, which can be raised to catch very low angle passes, and lowered in windy situations. The HT, a headset, an old android smartphone and a small writing pad completes the setup. AO-91 and AO-92 can be worked down to 3 degrees full quieting, beyond the hills, from my city lot house back yard. See pics Ultra_Portable_Setup_Working_FM_Satellites - Google Drive | | | | Ultra_Portable_Setup_Working_FM_Satellites - Google Drive | | | Actually, it would take a bit of work to NOT work these sats, happened once when the coax cables to the duplexer were reversed ! Good luck to the folks trying hard work them, wish I could help... 73! Umesh K6VUG

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Activation of CN87 and CN97 on Monday morning @ 1806 utc using AO-92
by johnv＠frontier.com 15 Jul '18

15 Jul '18

Activation of CN87 and CN97 on Monday morning @ 1806 utc using AO-92 I hope I found a public street corner that bisects CN87 and CN97 in Snohomish County WA. I believe I will have line of sight for most of the 11 minutes. Hope to hear you and this is a new one for you. John N7AME

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Not able to decode 1KUNS-PF - Can anyone help?
by Jean Marc Momple 15 Jul '18

15 Jul '18

Good afternoon, I have been trying to decode 1KUNS-PF fo the past 2 weeks without success in spite the signal received is sometimes strong. I used the UZ0HO Soundmodem specially written by Andrei for this bird with default settings. I can see the signal on the Soundmodem waterfall but no decode. I tried to play with the bandwidth and filters without success. Any hints? 73 Jean Marc (3B8DU)

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AirSpy & LNA questions
by Hans BX2ABT 14 Jul '18

14 Jul '18

Man, this sat stuff is difficult and I was getting a bit frustrated with lack of progress, to be honest. But just when I thought I didn't get anywhere, I went a big leap forward. But I'm not there yet, so I need your input. My goal is to get some decent reception of the major telemetry sats, e.g. Funcube-1. I have two rigs: an ICOM IC820H and an AirSpy Mini SDR running on a Linux box with GQRX as front-end. I have a Chinese Arrow Alaska clone pointing 200 degrees with 20 degree elevation. The other antenna currently is a turnstile tuned for 137 MHz, but I have 2/70 DCAs as well (they had to come down this week because of a typhoon. Will be up again shortly). The bare antennas do fine on terrestrial signals, but up till now very few sats were heard (mostly the Xiwang sats and Athenoxat-1) and signals were very very weak. I got myself some proto boards and PGA103+ MMICs and built two LNAs according to schematics found on the web. On the workbench they perform as they should and give some 15-25 dB gain depending on what frequency is used. I use an old AM/FM signal generator and an RTL-SDR as crude scope since I don't have a real one. I mounted the LNAs as close as possible to the antennas and they are fed with a bias-T from Minikits.com.au. The first results were disappointing: I used the AirSpy and noticed a lot more signal but also an increased noise floor. With the AirSpy there is a lot of fiddling going on in the software and I managed to get some improvement by tweaking the LNA gain, Mix gain and IF gain. Still I couldn't hear any sat signals. This afternoon I switched from the AirSpy to the IC820H and lo-and-behold very strong beacon signals from XW2A and F; the strongest I've ever heard. Even the AirSpy did detect a signal, although not-at-all as great as the IC820H. To get a cleaner signal from the IC820H I did have to engage the attenuator on the set, though. Using the IC820H I also heard a very weak beacon signal from CO-65, but the AirSpy failed there. Conclusion: the IC820H could detect signals that the AirSpy could not detect at all or detect them much better. Pretty happy with this step forward, but not satisfied. Question is how to improve even more. Q1: is the LNA desensing the AirSpy (and to a lesses extend, the IC820H) and if so, how to fix that? I read something about an attenuation network after the LNA to improve the front-end of the receiver. Might that help? Q2: when not powered, MMICs seem to have a very high insertion loss. Is there a way to remotely bypass the LNA in order to compare reception with and without the LNA? Q3: would filtering help? E.g. bandpass filters for 2m and 70cm. I do realize that this would mean another couple of dB of insertion loss, but maybe that disadvantage outweighs the advantages. I would appreciate any input on the above and also would like to hear from others who use the AirSpy Mini for sat reception. I already did a lot of googling, but can't find any clear cut answers. Hope you all can help me go into the right direction. Cheers, Hans BX2ABT

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Upcoming ARISS Contact Schedule as of 2018-07-13 21:00 UTC
by aj9n＠aol.com 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Upcoming ARISS Contact Schedule as of 2018-07-13 21:00 UTC Quick list of scheduled contacts and events: Space Port Area Conference for Educators (SPACE), Kennedy Space Center, FL (CASIS#4) participating school Burns Science & Technology Charter School, Oak Hill, FL, telebridge via W6SRJ (***) The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS The scheduled astronaut is Ricky Arnold KE5DAU Contact was successful: Fri 2018-07-13 14:00:22 UTC 42 deg (***) Essex Heights Primary School, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, telebridge via VK4KHZ The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS The scheduled astronaut is Serena Aunon-Chancellor KG5TMT Contact is a go for: Tue 2018-07-17 08:24:52 UTC 85 deg 7th International Aerospace School. I.N. Sultanova Rep. Bashkortostan, Ufa, Russia, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is Oleg Artemyev Contact is a go for 2018-07-20 20:15 UTC ****************************************************************************** ARISS is always glad to receive listener reports for the above contacts. ARISS thanks everyone in advance for their assistance. Feel free to send your reports to aj9n(a)amsat.org or aj9n(a)aol.com. Listen for the ISS on the downlink of 145.8Ø MHz. ******************************************************************************* All ARISS contacts are made via the Kenwood radio unless otherwise noted. ******************************************************************************* Several of you have sent me emails asking about the RAC ARISS website and not being able to get in. That has now been changed to http://www.ariss.org/ Note that there are links to other ARISS websites from this site. **************************************************************************** Looking for something new to do? How about receiving DATV from the ISS? If interested, then please go to the ARISS-EU website for complete details. Look for the buttons indicating Ham Video. http://www.ariss-eu.org/ If you need some assistance, ARISS mentor Kerry N6IZW, might be able to provide some insight. Contact Kerry at kbanke(a)sbcglobal.net **************************************************************************** ARISS congratulations the following mentors who have now mentored over 100 schools: Francesco IKØWGF with 132 Satoshi 7M3TJZ with 129 Gaston ON4WF with 123 Sergey RV3DR with 103 **************************************************************************** The webpages listed below were all reviewed for accuracy. Out of date webpages were removed and new ones have been added. If there are additional ARISS websites I need to know about, please let me know. Note, all times are approximate. It is recommended that you do your own orbital prediction or start listening about 10 minutes before the listed time. All dates and times listed follow International Standard ISO 8601 date and time format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS The complete schedule page has been updated as of 2018-07-13 21:00 UTC. (***) Here you will find a listing of all scheduled school contacts, and questions, other ISS related websites, IRLP and Echolink websites, and instructions for any contact that may be streamed live. http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/arissnews.rtf http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/arissnews.txt Total number of ARISS ISS to earth school events is 1237. (***) Each school counts as 1 event. Total number of ARISS ISS to earth school contacts is 1185. (***) Each contact may have multiple schools sharing the same time slot. Total number of ARISS supported terrestrial contacts is 47. A complete year by year breakdown of the contacts may be found in the file. http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/arissnews.rtf Please feel free to contact me if more detailed statistics are needed. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The following US states and entities have never had an ARISS contact: Delaware, South Dakota, Wyoming, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, and the Virgin Islands. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ QSL information may be found at: http://www.ariss.org/qsl-cards.html ISS callsigns: DPØISS, IRØISS, NA1SS, OR4ISS, RSØISS **************************************************************************** The successful school list has been updated as of 2018-07-13 21:00 UTC. (***) http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/Successful_ARISS_schools.rtf Frequency chart for packet, voice, and crossband repeater modes showing Doppler correction as of 2005-07-29 04:00 UTC http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/ISS_frequencies_and_Doppler_correction .rtf Listing of ARISS related magazine articles as of 2006-07-10 03:30 UTC. http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/ARISS_magazine_articles.rtf Check out the Zoho reports of the ARISS contacts https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?DBID=412218000000020415 **************************************************************************** Exp. 55 on orbit Drew Feustel Oleg Artemyev Ricky Arnold KE5DAU Exp. 56 on orbit Serena Aunon-Chancellor KG5TMT Alexander Gerst KF5ONO Sergei Propopev **************************************************************************** 73, Charlie Sufana AJ9N One of the ARISS operation team mentors

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AO-92 Camera Passes this week -- A big fat THANK YOU!!
by Zach Leffke 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Hello fellow AMSAT'ers, I just wanted to send out a quick thanks to all for supporting the camera passes over the last couple days. We did a demo here at VT on 7/12 for a large group of Middle Schoolers and they were definitely wowed by the Camera images. We were also able to monitor a bit of audio on the FM downlink as the satellite rose on Blacksburg, but before it was kicked into Camera Mode. I was able to show them the footprint with our tracking program and explained how we wouldn't start to see images until the footprint crossed into Florida in order for Drew to kick the bird into camera mode. Before the pass I had them guess what kinds of things we might see, and they were pretty excited when they saw their guesses were pretty close (clouds, coastlines, ocean, etc........one kid was disappointed that there were no aliens...:-) ). While we were able to get a good number of images direct in Blacksburg (including the shot of Cape Cod, Pic 86), it was very reassuring to know if I bungled the local station demo that I could jump to the website and show them images there collected from the community! So many thanks to all out there for the backup. And many thanks to Drew and the Ops Team for accommodating us with the Camera Mode request. It felt really great showing kids visiting VT images from Space from a camera built at VT! Overall great success!.....Made possible in no small part thanks to the entire AMSAT community. So on behalf of VT....THANK YOU !!!!! -Zach, KJ4QLP -- Research Associate Aerospace Systems Lab Ted & Karyn Hume Center for National Security & Technology Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University Work Phone: 540-231-4174 Cell Phone: 540-808-6305

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Re: [amsat-bb] AO73/FUNcube-1 Operations
by Jim Heck 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Hi All, The spacecraft is now operating in continuous transponder mode. Plan is to switch to Educational mode on Sunday PM UTC as usual. Have fun 73 Jim G3WGM and the FUNCube team

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New Mexico Museum of SPACE HISTORY
by Clayton Coleman W5PFG 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were on a small road trip around New Mexico and stumbled upon the most delightful discovery... The New Mexico Museum of SPACE HISTORY. We had planned for lunch in Alamogordo and a quick visit to White Sands National Monument, but the museum made it into a longer visit. It is not a large museum by any means. Some of the artifacts may be things you have seen at other space museums but it is most definitely worth a few hours of your time. The location and its view of White Sands off in the distance is impressive. The architect and team that laid out the exhibits get an A+ for flow and content. http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/ 73, Clayton W5PFG

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CM79
by Anthony Wiese 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Hello All, Look for me this afternoon's two passes of SO-50 from CM79. Moved the trip one day early because of weather concerns for the weekend. Thunderstorms, excessive heat warnings, etc. Have no fear if you miss me. Again, this is more of recon mission for a grander activation later on in the year.Cheers,Anthony

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AO-92 1626UTC 7/12 PASS CAMERA TEST
by christy hunter 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

I was hoping to get a partial decode on the camera test this am, but because it was a low pass (6deg) for me, the stronger signal from CAS-4B (also overhead at the time) high speed telemetry signal captured the telem decoder. Is there a way to prevent these stronger signals from over-powering the telem decoder AO-92 target frequency? (Don't read this as a complaint as having too many satellites) thanks, 73 Christy KB6LTY DM14 --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com

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