Hello Everyone,
I have taken the information from Ib, OZ1MY and plugged it into SatPC32 and starting on May 21, 2013 at approximately 1346UTC, AO7 will start going into brief eclipse periods as it approaches the coast of Antarctica. Based on my observations these eclipses will increase in duration until they reach a peak around the Summer equinox and then they will start to taper off until the last eclipse occurs at approximately 0245UTC on August 2, 2013.
If the past is any indication of future events, this could mean erratic behavior from AO7. Last year for an extended period of time, AO7 was coming up in Mode B every day. I do not know of any rhyme or reason to which mode it may come up in but I plan to monitor AO7 close this year to see if we have another extended "Mode B" period.
I will try to keep the StarCom BB up to date on the status of AO7 during this time. I would suppose the worst case scenario would be if we had an extended "Mode A" condition.
The dates are 05/21/2013 until 08/02/2013 the eclipse's start at 15 to 20 second periods up to about 3 minutes in duration at their peak. I am not sure how much total loss of sunlight is required cause the satellite to start acting differently, I know the batteries are totally gone but I do not know if there is any type capacitive storage that may retain a voltage in critical systems on the satellite. If anyone has any information on that I would be interested.
That is my AO7 status report for now! Stay Tuned!
73 All FRM; K4FEG EM55aj84ta