Hi Mark,
Thanks for the update. I'm glad to see it was not a real problem. I'm sure the batteries are getting tired this far into it's life. Too bad about the upcoming orbit. Man, I sure miss AO-16.
Thanks, Rick
Rick,
Thanks for your note--it's not really down. Please refer to: http://oscar.dcarr.org/
I had intended to do a more complete update later, but here's the quick version.
1) AO-51 is still in eclipses for the next 4-5 days. Soon we'll be back in 100% sun (until the end of December.) That means within the next several days we should be able to keep AO-51 transmitting all the time. In fact, we'll need to in order to keep temperatures down!
2) In recent days I've had to resort to shutting down the voice repeater in order to grab some telemetry files from the bird. This is very important as we are nearing the end of the eclipse period and we want some good data for current use and for future reference. We keep the voice repeater shutdowns to a minimum and try to do it during the AM passes over the eastern US. But they are necessary at this time. Sorry for any inconvenience.
3) Currently AO-51 has been automatically turning itself OFF and back ON because of the power budget. You'll see this more often as it first comes out of eclipse and as it begins to enter eclipse. We continue to fine tune this, but our goal is to keep it transmitting when there is enough power--without having the bird shutdown until manually commanded back ON by one of the command team members.
4) Come January, we won't see much of a break from the eclipse periods for a long, long time (there is one short window of full sun, but it's about 2 weeks long in late Feb/early March 2011). The command team has been using the recent eclipse period to learn how to become more efficient in the use of the power management code on board. This allows us to get the most "bang for the buck" out of the available power. It's pretty complex and versatile. We've learned a tremendous amount this eclipse period, but still have more to learn in the future. And there will be a future for AO-51 :)
I hope that helps to reassure you...that is my goal!
73,
Mark N8MH AO-51 Command Team member
On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Rick - WA4NVM [email protected] wrote:
GM All,
I haven't seen any post about AO-51 shutting down during it's last pass. We all hope it's a fast fix. Good luck to the control team.
73 all,
Rick WA4NVM _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb