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Upcoming ARISS contact with Boys and Girls Club, Ft. Meade, MD
by n4csitwo＠bellsouth.net 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

An International Space Station school contact has been planned with participants at Boys and Girls Club, Ft. Meade, MD on 18 Sept. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 19:58 UTC. It is recommended that you start listening approximately 10 minutes before this time. The duration of the contact is approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds. The contact will be a telebridge between NA1SS and VK4KHZ. The contact should be audible over portions of Australia and adjacent areas. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The contact is expected to be conducted in English. Story: The Fort Meade, Maryland Middle School / Teen (MST) Program provides an after-school and summer camp program for youth ages 11 to 18 (grades 6 - 12). The program has 174 enrolled members and 50 - 60 youth attend on any given day. Half of the youth that attend are from military families, and most of the other half have parents who work in DoD in some capacity. The MST Program encourages middle school and high school teenagers to be the best that they can be by challenging them through various means. It provides a safe and supervised environment for youth engagement. Youth are provided internet access, snacks, homework help, game systems, a basketball court, music equipment, pool table, and ping-pong table. Through a generous grant from Raytheon through the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), the program recently constructed a state of the art STEM center known as the Center of Innovation (COI), which incorporates training for MST Program staff, STEM events throughout the year, and a newly remodeled room with new STEM equipment for pushing the envelope in STEM experiences. Youth are now offered activities such as CAD, 3D printing and carving, and building circuits, to name a few. With the implementation of the COI, engineers and technologists of Raytheon, as well as government agencies such as DISA and NSA, consistently volunteer their time to offer STEM activities to youth. The program welcomes volunteers and the broader perspective that they bring. Participants will ask as many of the following questions as time allows: 1. Do you have any customs for greeting arriving astronauts? 2. Do you feel trapped by not being able to go outside whenever you want? 3. Can you see the whole earth from up there? 4. How does it feel to sleep in space? 5. Is the experience of being on the ISS worth being gone for so long? 6. How old do you have to be to go into space? 7. What are your roles? 8. What is your favorite type of work on the ISS? 9. What is the most interesting experiment you're doing on the ISS? 10. What kinds of things do you build with your 3D printers? 11. When you return to earth, do you feel completely different? 12. What do you eat, and how do you store your food? 13. What is your favorite space food? 14. Can you all participate in space walks? 15. Do you feel lost or disoriented when space-walking? 16. As a team, how do you resolve your differences? 17. What's the view like up there? 18. What happens when you get sick? 19. How long have you been up there? 20. Are you ready to come back home? 21. What do you do when you're onboard? 22. What do you do for fun? 23. How do you solve your problems when they arise? 24. What is it like to live and work in space? PLEASE CHECK THE FOLLOWING FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ARISS UPDATES: Visit ARISS on Facebook. We can be found at Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS). To receive our Twitter updates, follow @ARISS_status Next planned event(s): 1. School in Bulgaria, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Tue 2019-09-24 16:10 UTC 2. UAE school #1 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Fri 2019-09-27 12:10 UTC 3. UAE school #2 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Sat 2019-09-28 11:20 UTC 4. UAE school #3 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Tue 2019-10-01 TBD UTC About ARISS Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the ISS National Lab and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students in classrooms or public forms. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see www.ariss.org. Thank you & 73, David - AA4KN --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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Hackaday article on the Lunar Gateway.
by Hans BX2ABT 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

Saw an article on Hackaday.com about hams and the Lunar Gateway. Might be an interesting, even though it's not very in-dept. https://hackaday.com/2019/09/16/hams-in-space-gearing-up-for-the-lunar-gate… 73 de Hans

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How to tame gr-satellites?
by Hans BX2ABT 18 Sep '19

18 Sep '19

I was going to write a rant about gr-satellites, but then again that would only help me release some of my chagrin and not help met get going, so instead the question in the general interes of this list...... "How can mere mortals start to get going with gr-satellites?" Been a Linux end-user for 20 years now, so I know my way around, although I can not claim to be an expert. Usually with a quick search online I can find enough info to get going or solve a problem. Even the odd alteration in some source code is not something I am strange to, although a programmer I am not. And then there is GNU Radio.......which almost seems like it comes from another planet. Installing it, no problem with the package manager. I even had success with PyBOMBS, until that wasn't updated anymore. But then, once you get past the basics installation trouble start with OOT modules, dependencies that can't be met, and flow graphs that won't compile. My biggest gripe is that documentation is very minimalist and often tells you how, not why, which doesn't help you in understanding the troubles that you ran into. gr-satellites is a good example of that, because Daniel writes these bare bones flow graphs and then what? There is no view-able output, not many hints on what blocks do, or how to implement them if they are missing. In short, it seems you first need a four year university course in GNU Radio and Python before you can start using it. That seems silly and a waste of resources, because even I can see the potential of GNU Radio/gr-satellites, especially with this new Taurus-1 sat with Codec-2 transponder around. So if you please, share your experience in how beginners can set up and use gr-satellites. What are necessary steps? What are pitfalls to avoid? And please also the "why", not only the "what". I guess that apart from me others will also be grateful for this. On my shack computer I run the latest Kubuntu version with GNU Radio 3.7.13.4 and I guess that is a reasonable starting point because of the popularity of Ubuntu and because it is Debian based. Although since a lot of GNU Radio needs to be compiled by hand is probably won't matter that much. Reading the above it still does sound a bit like a rant, but it was not written as such, believe me. Cheers for the replies and 73 de Hans

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Taurus-1 FM/Codec2 Voice Repeater Active
by Scott 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

The FM / Codec2 voice repeater on Taurus-1 went "live" today (17-Sept-2019) with 2 passes available to stations on the U.S. East Coast. W2RTV posted a video of the entire pass as seen from his station at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge9mSscTZYg The spacecraft is clearly spinning at a high rate; my receive audio wasn't nearly as good as Rocco's, but he's got a vastly superior antenna setup, so that never hurts. The repeater's uplink is normal FM on 145.820 MHz w/ a 67 Hz CTCSS tone. High power is definitely not needed but adjusting for uplink doppler can help extend your range. The downlink is a Codec2 digital stream at 9600 BPSK which you receive as USB on 435.840 MHz. That gets you in the ballpark, anyway. Once downlink packets are observed, center your 15k-wide USB window on the packets and doppler track from there. The digital voice stream (as well as telemetry) decodes with a flowgraph in GNU Radio. The original telemetry decoder for Taurus-1 was produced by EA4GPZ and is located at https://github.com/daniestevez/gr-satellites Several of us have added to Dani's flowgraph to provide audio output now that the repeater is active. That hybrid flowgraph can be found at: https://www.qsl.net/k/k4kdr//grc/taurus1-k4kdr-telem+audio-v1.grc Note that both the original decoder from Dani as well as the hybrid voice/telemetry flowgraph expect UDP audio input such as from GQRX. Here is a Tweet I posted after my first contact on the repeater today with a screen shot which pretty clearly shows how the spacecraft is spinning: https://twitter.com/scott23192/status/1174001658419994624 This repeater seems to work extremely well and should be way better if the spin rate reduces over time. Hope to hear more people on! -Scott, K4KDR

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Re: [amsat-bb] How to tame gr-satellites?
by John Zaruba 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

I completely agree with Hans’ point, but to put it more succinctly: Don’t give me a fish, teach me how to fish. It would be excellent to have a series of YouTube videos ( or a series of Journal articles)to follow to learn the ins-and-outs of gr-satellites. 73, John K2ZA Sent from my iPhone

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Upcoming ARISS Contact Schedule as of 2019-09-17 04:30 UTC
by aj9n＠aol.com 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Upcoming ARISS Contact Schedule as of 2019-09-17 04:30 UTC Quick list of scheduled contacts and events: Templestowe College, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, telebridge via VK6MJ The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS The scheduled astronaut is Nick Hague KG5TMV Contact is go for: Wed 2019-09-18 08:06:32 UTC 42 deg Watch for live stream at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QalYOnHURYk Watch VK6MJ handle the contact: https://batc.org.uk/live/vk6mj (***) Boys and Girls Club, Ft. Meade, MD., telebridge via VK4KHZ The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS The scheduled astronaut is Nick Hague KG5TMV Contact is go for: Fri 2019-09-20 19:58:23 UTC 54 deg School in Bulgaria, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Tue 2019-09-24 16:10 UTC UAE school #1 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Fri 2019-09-27 12:10 UTC UAE school #2 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Sat 2019-09-28 11:20 UTC UAE school #3 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Tue 2019-10-01 TBD UTC The Children’s Inn at NIH (National Institutes of Health), Bethesda, MD (CASIS#3), telebridge via ON4ISS (***) The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be OR4ISS (***) The scheduled astronaut is Nick Hague KG5TMV (***) Contact is go for: Mon 2019-09-23 20:08:27 UTC 89 deg (***) Watch for live coverage at: https://childrensinn.org/in-the-news/iss-astronaut-to-talk-to-ill-children-… https://www.facebook.com/TheChildrensInn/ https://twitter.com/NIH Facebook Posts: https://www.facebook.com/99591362449/posts/10157814902862450/?substory_inde… https://www.facebook.com/99591362449/posts/10157817661662450/?substory_inde… Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheChildrensInn/status/1162046525146566656 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6567797227903950848/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6567419538596515840/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B1MaU0BD7lG/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B1J8V1tAcpL/ University of Colorado Amateur Radio Club, Boulder, CO, telebridge via IK1SLD (***) The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be OR4ISS (***) The scheduled astronaut is Nick Hague KG5TMV (***) Contact is go for: Tue 2019-09-24 17:43:20 UTC 86 deg (***) AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium Sat 2019-10-12 to Sun 2019-10-13 The ARISS webpage is at http://www.ariss.org/ Note that there are links to other ARISS websites from this site. The main page for Applying to Host a Scheduled Contact may be found at http://www.ariss.org/apply-to-host-an-ariss-contact.html ARISS Contact Applications (United States) For many years I have on purpose not given the actual hyperlinks; I assume the user would do a copy/paste into their favorite browser. I am now thinking that the browsers have all grown up and most should be able to handle the link. Please let me know you experience any issues. So now you should be able to directly click on the link. (***) 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 2019-09-17 04:30 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 The successful school list has been updated as of 2019-09-03 17:30 UTC. http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ariss/news/Successful_ARISS_schools.rtf The ARISS webpage is at http://www.ariss.org/ Note that there are links to other ARISS websites from this site. The main page for Applying to Host a Scheduled Contact may be found at http://www.ariss.org/apply-to-host-an-ariss-contact.html ARISS Contact Applications (United States) The ARISS webpage is at http://www.ariss.org/ Note that there are links to other ARISS websites from this site. **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** ARISS Contact Applications (Europe, Africa and the Middle East) Schools and Youth organizations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East interested in setting up an ARISS radio contact with an astronaut on board the International Space Station are invited to submit an application from September to October and from February to April. Please refer to details and the application form at www.ariss-eu.org/school-contacts. Applications should be addressed by email to: school.selection.manager(a)ariss-eu.org ARISS Contact Applications (Canada, Central and South America, Asia and Australia and Russia) Organizations outside the United States can apply for an ARISS contact by filling out an application. Please direct questions to the appropriate regional representative listed below. If your country is not specifically listed, send your questions to the nearest ARISS Region listed. If you are unsure which address to use, please send your question to the ARISS-Canada representative; they will forward your question to the appropriate coordinator. For the application, go to: http://www.ariss.org/ariss-application.html. ARISS-Canada and the Americas, except USA: Steve McFarlane, VE3TBD email to: ve3tbd(a)gmail.com ARISS-Japan, Asia, Pacific and Australia: Satoshi Yasuda, 7M3TJZ email to: ariss(a)iaru-r3.org, Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) http://www.jarl.org/ ARISS-Russia: Soyuz Radioljubitelei Rossii (SRR) https://srr.ru/ ****************************************************************************** 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? Please note that the HamTV system has been brought back to earth for troubleshooting. Please monitor ARISS-EU or ARISS-ON for the very latest news on the troubleshooting efforts. 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 The HamTV webpage: https://www.amsat-on.be/hamtv-summary/ **************************************************************************** ARISS congratulations the following mentors who have now mentored over 100 schools: Satoshi 7M3TJZ with 136 Francesco IKØWGF with 132 Gaston ON4WF with 123 Sergey RV3DR with 120 **************************************************************************** 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. Total number of ARISS ISS to earth school events is 1329. Each school counts as 1 event. Total number of ARISS ISS to earth school contacts is 1272. 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: 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 **************************************************************************** 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_correctio… Check out the Zoho reports of the ARISS contacts https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?DBID=412218000000020415 **************************************************************************** Exp. 59 on orbit Christina Koch Aleksey Ovchinin Nick Hague KG5TMV Exp. 60 on orbit Luca Parmitano KF5KDP Alexander Skvortsov Drew Morgan KI5AAA **************************************************************************** 73, Charlie Sufana AJ9N One of the ARISS operation team mentors

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Upcoming ARISS contact with Templestowe College, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
by n4csitwo＠bellsouth.net 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

An International Space Station school contact has been planned with participants at Templestowe College, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 18 Sept. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 08:06 UTC. It is recommended that you start listening approximately 10 minutes before this time. The duration of the contact is approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds. The contact will be a telebridge between NA1SS and VK6MJ. The contact should be audible over portions of Australia and adjacent areas. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The contact is expected to be conducted in English. Teacher leading the activities: Neil Metcalfe, Physics and Mathematics teacher and life-long Apollo mission fan; being old enough to remember the moon landings and the drama of Apollo 13. My favourite astronaut is Jim Lovell (sorry to everybody else - you're all awesome) Templestowe College (TC) is located in south-east Melbourne, Australia. It is a school of about 1100 students that is breaking new ground in education, with a major numbers of the subjects and activities being student lead. TC students do not wear uniforms and call their teachers by their first name. We have a "one voice" policy whereby teachers and students have an equal voice in how the school is run and operated. "Yes" is our default answer. We have a school farm on a suburban site and do all our own animal husbandry with students taking the leading role with teacher supervision. The ISS hook-up will be compered by the students; lead up activities including, chemical rocket launches, air/water rockets launches (with the adjoining junior school), astronaut selection tests and a space movie night will be organised and lead by the students. The hook-up will have week-long build up with cross the curriculum activities, discussions and debates being brought into most subject areas. TC was nominated and shortlisted for Australian Government School of the Year in 2019. Participants will ask as many of the following questions as time allows: 1. What is the most interesting thing you've seen in space or from ISS?? 2. How do you stay healthy and what happens if you are sick? 3. Do you have free time, if so, what do you do with it? 4. Are there any permanent effects of being in space for a long time? 5. If a family or personal emergency occurs, are you allowed to go home? 6. What interesting experiments do you perform on the ISS? 7. What does it feel like bring back on earth after a long time in space? 8. Are there international space laws and censorship laws that govern people on ISS? 9. How much fuel do you use maneuvering the ISS around space debris? 10. Do astronauts ever feel isolated, and if so, how do they cope with that? 11. How does your family feel about you being on ISS and what support do they get? 12. What is the hardest thing you do on the ISS? 13. What kind of personal items are you allowed to bring? 14. Do you have access to medicine and/or doctors? 15. What do you do when you feel fed up or annoyed with each other? 16. What kind of training did you have to be qualified to go to the space station? 17. What made you want to become astronaut? Was it a lifelong dream, or did it just happen to be? 18. Are you put in isolation before going into space and coming back to earth, if so, how long? 19. What is your daily routine on the ISS? 20. How do you cope with the stress of take-off and being away from earth? PLEASE CHECK THE FOLLOWING FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ARISS UPDATES: Visit ARISS on Facebook. We can be found at Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS). To receive our Twitter updates, follow @ARISS_status Next planned event(s): 1. Boys and Girls Club, Ft. Meade, MD., telebridge via VK4KHZ The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS The scheduled astronaut is Nick Hague KG5TMV Contact is go for: Fri 2019-09-20 19:58:23 UTC 2. School in Bulgaria, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Tue 2019-09-24 16:10 UTC 3. UAE school #1 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Fri 2019-09-27 12:10 UTC 4. UAE school #2 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Sat 2019-09-28 11:20 UTC 5. UAE school #3 with Space Flight participant, direct via TBD The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be RSØISS The scheduled astronaut is TBD Contact is go for Tue 2019-10-01 TBD UTC About ARISS Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the ISS National Lab and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students in classrooms or public forms. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see www.ariss.org. Thank you & 73, David - AA4KN --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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AMSAT 50th Award
by Corlissbs 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

(For the "50TH ANNIVERSARY AMSAT SATELLITE FRIENDS OF 50 AWARD" do the contacts have to be 50 different individuals (i.e. 50 different callsigns) or just a contact with anybody on 50 different days (could be a QSO with the same person on 50 different days)? ) I asked AMSAT that question and never received an answer. So, I sent in list of days with the same people. That makes sense to me, because it is a different day. But I never received my award either. Brad Smith KC9UQR Sent from Brad’s iPad

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Re: [amsat-bb] How to tame gr-satellites?
by Hans BX2ABT 16 Sep '19

16 Sep '19

No no no no no no no no no, that is exactly not what I meant and want at all. There should be more "somebodies" who know and understand this, not one or two who solve problems for the majority of mere mortals. Processing RF with computers is already a big thing and it's becoming even bigger. Nobody will understand every aspect of it, but everybody should at least understand enough to solve or mitigate problems. Amateur radio is as much about enjoying communication as it is about enriching your knowledge. The more knowledge there is the easier it becomes to solve problems. Hope you can appreciate my point of view. Cheers, Hans. On 09/16/2019 11:01 PM, Doug Phelps wrote: > Suggestion. how about if somebody who knows what they're doing set it > up on a raspberry pi and then others can just copy the SD card and be off. > > > Sent from ProtonMail mobile > > > > -------- Original Message -------- > On Sep 16, 2019, 9:52 AM, Paul Stoetzer via AMSAT-BB < > amsat-bb(a)amsat.org> wrote: > > > It took me about 6 hours of work to get gr-satellites going on my > Fedora > handheld computer I used for portable LO-90 operations (and hope > to use for > portable Taurus-1 ops soon as well). I have some Linux > familiarity, but, > yes you do end up running into wrong versions of dependencies and > missing > dependencies and having to look up a lot of things to get things > working. > > Until recently, I would have suggested that Arch or Manjaro make > it really > easy to run gr-satellites because it's a very simple process to > build it > from the Arch User Repository. I was able to get it running on an Arch > laptop in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, gr-satellites does not > work with > GNU Radio 3.8 yet and Arch and Manjaro both ship GNU Radio 3.8 by > default, > so I can't really suggest that as an "easy solution" any more. > > gr-satellites is a great tool and Dani deserves a lot of credit > for the > work he has done to support so many different satellites. What > would be > great is for someone to develop a method to make it simple to > package for > various distributions and a good front-end for using it. That > would not be > an easy task, but it would go a long way towards making it > friendly for > less experienced Linux users. > > 73, > > Paul, N8HM > > On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 10:35 AM Hans BX2ABT via AMSAT-BB < > amsat-bb(a)amsat.org <mailto:amsat-bb@amsat.org>> wrote: > > > I was going to write a rant about gr-satellites, but then again that > > would only help me release some of my chagrin and not help met get > > going, so instead the question in the general interes of this > list...... > > > > "How can mere mortals start to get going with gr-satellites?" > > > > Been a Linux end-user for 20 years now, so I know my way around, > > although I can not claim to be an expert. Usually with a quick > search > > online I can find enough info to get going or solve a problem. > Even the > > odd alteration in some source code is not something I am strange to, > > although a programmer I am not. And then there is GNU > Radio.......which > > almost seems like it comes from another planet. Installing it, no > > problem with the package manager. I even had success with > PyBOMBS, until > > that wasn't updated anymore. But then, once you get past the basics > > installation trouble start with OOT modules, dependencies that > can't be > > met, and flow graphs that won't compile. My biggest gripe is that > > documentation is very minimalist and often tells you how, not > why, which > > doesn't help you in understanding the troubles that you ran into. > > gr-satellites is a good example of that, because Daniel writes these > > bare bones flow graphs and then what? There is no view-able > output, not > > many hints on what blocks do, or how to implement them if they > are missing. > > > > In short, it seems you first need a four year university course > in GNU > > Radio and Python before you can start using it. That seems silly > and a > > waste of resources, because even I can see the potential of GNU > > Radio/gr-satellites, especially with this new Taurus-1 sat with > Codec-2 > > transponder around. > > > > So if you please, share your experience in how beginners can set > up and > > use gr-satellites. What are necessary steps? What are pitfalls > to avoid? > > And please also the "why", not only the "what". I guess that > apart from > > me others will also be grateful for this. > > > > On my shack computer I run the latest Kubuntu version with GNU Radio > > 3.7.13.4 <http://3.7.13.4> and I guess that is a reasonable > starting point because of the > > popularity of Ubuntu and because it is Debian based. Although > since a > > lot of GNU Radio needs to be compiled by hand is probably won't > matter > > that much. > > > > Reading the above it still does sound a bit like a rant, but it > was not > > written as such, believe me. Cheers for the replies and 73 de Hans > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org <mailto:AMSAT-BB@amsat.org>. > AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available > > to all interested persons worldwide without requiring > membership. Opinions > > expressed > > are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official > views of > > AMSAT-NA. > > Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur > satellite program! > > Subscription settings: > https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb > > > _______________________________________________ > Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org <mailto:AMSAT-BB@amsat.org>. AMSAT-NA > makes this open forum available > to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. > Opinions expressed > are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official > views of AMSAT-NA. > Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite > program! > Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb >

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FOX TELEMETRY SERVER will be down for maintenance
by Chris Thompson 15 Sep '19

15 Sep '19

I am going to take the FOX telemetry server down to work on upgrades needed to support future spacecraft. I'm not sure how long it will take. I am hoping to complete this evening US time. Telemetry will queue at FoxTelem and be sent once the server is back up and running. Let me know if you have any questions. 73 Chris -- Chris E. Thompson chrisethompson(a)gmail.com g0kla(a)arrl.net

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