On Behalf Of Mike Zwingl oe3mzc I will be travelling V51 NAMBIA during June, JULY, AUGUST and want to know if it would make sense to use any of the PACSATs for APRS out in the bush, like I did with ISS in West Australia last year?
It is the chicken-Egg problem.
I hope that we can inspire other satellite builders to support this simple wilderness/mobile position and status reporting application. We hope others would build PCSAT (APRS) compatible digital satelites on 145.825 to continue this viable moble satetllite application. We figured there could be as many as 6 or more such satellits all on 145.825 to provide almost continuous coverage for travelers.
But PCSAT-1 only works during mid-day passes when it is in the sun. And this is so spotty, that it is hard to keep the worldwide network of ground stations interested. But for the next several months, and in the future, we will have these satellites on 145.825:
PCSAT-1 - sometimes workable during mid day sun ANDE-1 - through June 08 but needs wakeup every orbit RAFT - RX only works at night and is very weak PEHUENSAT - has no user uplink FASTRAC - FUTURE U of TX Satellite with links on 145.825 ECHO AO51 - Digipeats 9600 baud but is on different freqs and we do not have enough Igates for the downlink
But the key is keeping enough ground stations IGATING all the packets they hear on 145.825 to make this system work. The more the better.
First question would be: Is there a reliable PACTSAT in Orbit at that time? Second: do you know about an SATGATE in this area? Otherwise I would need to go back to HF-APRS, preferably ROBUST-PACKET Mode. hw? tnx info de Mike oe3mzc / vk3fpf
----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Bruninga" bruninga@usna.edu To: "'VK / ZL APRS Users'" ozaprs@aprs.net.au;
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 1:28 AM Subject: [OZAPRS] My first Posit via PCSAT for a long time
Yes, PCSAT-1 is working great. I was driving through
Tennessee
on Friday, and saw a PCSAT-11 packet on the normal North Americal 144.39 frequency and so I quickly QSY'ed to 145.825
and
in my mobile with a magmount, my D700 radio captured 12
stations
via PCSAT-1 and 10 messages/bulletins to the radio front
panel.
PCSAT-1 has a 1 minute beacon on 144.39 over North America
so
that people in low-QRM areas might see when PCSAT is in view
for
just this purpose. There is no 144.39 uplink, of course,
since
all the satellite would hear is 10,000 jammed packets in
space.
Later, I just left my radio on overnight on 145.825 and
captured
similarly a dozen stations. (Be sure to set your RANGE
limit
back to 0, or the D700 will ignore all packets coming from
too
far away...)... De WB4APR, Bob
On Behalf Of Ian Mills Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 8:26 PM
Well, I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon as I
managed
quite easily to have my position received via PCSAT. I drive two hours to and from work and I have been
monitoring
PCSAT... so I fired off my position via a THD-7 into a 30w amp attached to a 1/4 wave rod antenna on my car. ...the following from findu confirms I got through:
VK2HIM-7>S4T3W2,PCSAT-1*,WIDE2-2,qAo,VK3JTM-5:`NM_!6 >/>"3w}
VK2HIM-7>S4T4V8,PCSAT-1,VK7HSE-1,VK7RAD,WIDE2*,qAo,VK7HDM-12:`
NM @5>/>"4.}On UHF repeater
VK2HIM-7>S4T4X1,PCSAT-1,VK7HSE-1,VK7RAD,WIDE2*,qAo,VK7HDM-12:`
NMKnf~>/>"4:}
The last time I tried was over a year ago and I didn't have any trouble then either, and this was using the 5W THd7 without a 30w amp!!
Cheers Ian vk2him AWA Limited _______________________________________________ Ozaprs mailing list Ozaprs@aprs.net.au http://aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs
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