On 5/8/2011 9:29 PM, Roger Kolakowski wrote:
In the past...like way past...didn't AMSAT keep a satellite "alive" by positioning a BAUDOT RTTY loop in Canada to fire up the satellite for the American continents, at least for declining passes?
Of course the reset code may have been much simpler then, but computers make automatic timing and response much easier now.
The further north the better for declining passes around the world....
Of course the same could be said for ascending passes from southern "pole" type areas.
Roger WA1KAT
We are working on this right now. There are six commands that have to be given in sequence to make this work, and for the time being, one at the end of a pass. It's important to shut things down to keep from damaging the batteries even further in eclipse. There may be a small chance for a brief recovery in the fall of this year, and we don't want to endanger that by further harm to the batteries.
In the meantime, listen to 435.150 during the afternoon passes over the Eastern US, especially on weekends and holidays. If you hear voices, the repeater should be available for use with a 145.880 uplink. If you don't hear anything, don't transmit. This is IMPORTANT: There are no promises or predictions of when we will get the chance to run the repeater. It is on an 'as available' basis. Please don't e-mail asking when it will be on, unless it's for a very, very special event. If I know in advance, I'll drop a note to here or to the AMSAT twitter account. That being said, this afternoon is looking good.
73, Drew KO4MA AMSAT-NA VP Operations