No joy on the 12:00Z pass (48 deg max elev) here... could hear the CW beacon, BPSK, and FM transmissions with deep fades, but otherwise quite well. No other stations heard in the transponder passband, nor could I hear myself on the downlink, from 5 to 75 watts uplink using omnis (M2 eggbeater w/preamp on the downlink, homebrew turnstile on the uplink). Next pass here not until 04:30Z.
It doesn't appear that the satellite has any active or passive attitude control system. I have heard that the spin should eventually settle around the same axis as the antenna, but is there any reasonable hope that that would happen during the satellite's operational lifetime?
George, KA3HSW
----- Original Message ----
From: "Rsoifer@aol.com" Rsoifer@aol.com To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Sat, August 6, 2011 8:48:21 AM Subject: [amsat-bb] Transponder
On the ARISSat-1 pass just ended here (23 degrees max elevation), results were about the same as yesterday. I heard my CW downlink for about a minute, peaking 559. Several other CW signals were in there, but I couldn't get
their calls due to the deep fades.
Bruce appears to be right that the transponder's performance depends largely on the spacecraft's orientation.
73 Ray W2RS