It's not so much a problem of not enough illumination, but more that we are running on 3 or 3.5 cells, and we need ~4 to make the transmitters work. There may be some points during the orbit when the V gets high enough for the transmitter to come on at low power, but that is conjecture only. We don't know when or really even if that will happen.
If a cell opens up in the future, the IHU will immediately crash upon eclipse, and the battery voltage -may- rise to whatever the panels can provide. If this happens we may be able to restart the IHU and get a transmitter running, but it will only last until the next eclipse.
73, Drew KO4MA
PS. I note that the UK-DMC1 satellite was retired today after 8 years in orbit due to battery condition. We are almost as good as the mega-dollar pros! http://blog.sstl.co.uk/archives/394-UK-DMC-1-to-take-well-earned-retirement....
On 11/29/2011 3:49 PM, PE0SAT wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for reading.
Is there an expected state when the voltage is high enough regarding AO-51.
The reason I ask, is to listen and see if there is some life in the satellite when the voltage becomes high enough when there is full exposure after the coming eclipse periode.
73 Jan PE0SAT