RAFT's packet-to-voice circuit only works in the dark, and in a few days, RAFT will begin entering the late evening time frame when Northern Hemisphere stations can again use it.
RAFT is nearing its mission life time half-way point. It has decayed down to 180 nm and will re-enter before the middle of August.
Due to its low orbit and small footprint, we need command stations in the Southern USA between Arizona to Georgia to help us conduct our primary mission of detecting the 218.98 MHz radar fence when it flies through it. We need command stations in those states because they are near the radar fence and will be in the footprint of the radar. The ideal command station has these atributes:
1) A reasonable 2m beam for ops on 145.825 2) A packet TNC 3) A familiarity with dumb-terminal TNC operations such as A. Connections, Converse, UNPROTO, etc B. Remote sysop logon of Kantronics TNC's 4) Desireable, is some experience with UI packets and APRS
The objective of these southern command stations is to logon, send the command to activate the RAFT Radar receiver for 1 minute in anticipation of passing through the fence. Then hopefully recording any audio heard on the downlink (145.825). Of course, once the radar receiver is on, everyone in the footprint should be able to hear it.
For info, see the ANDE-RAFT operations page: http://eng.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/ande-raft-ops.html
And for more info on the 216.98 MHz radar receiver, follow the links to the RAFT design pages.
If you meet the criterial above, lemme know.
Bob, WB4APR. US Naval Academy Satellite Lab