I saw the slightest trace of the RTTY signal on 8-Dec, but nothing remotely strong enough to decode. Here's my tweet from that pass w/ a screen shot:
https://twitter.com/scott23192/status/1203668726584881157
... seems there is a good chance that the antennas, solar panels, or maybe both did not deploy. Fortunately a few large antenna array stations around the world have received some RTTY downlinks clear enough to decode, so at least the satellite is alive.
On a related note, besides the extreme low signal strength, a hurdle developed to make decoding of the LoRa portion of the downlink more difficult to decode. They've determined that the more readily available SX1278 LoRa radio chip that many of us are setup with will -not- be able to decode the packets from the satellite's SX1268 chip except under very specific (and unlikely) character combinations. In particular, it seems that the 'sync word' programmed into the satellite for transmission over its SX1268 LoRa radio is not compatible with our SX1278 LoRa radios on the ground.
You can purchase SX1268 LoRa radio chips, but not in a form that's as easy to use as the SX1278. So, between that glitch & the low signal strength, for the moment a LoRa decode might be a long-shot.
-Scott, K4KDR
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-----Original Message----- From: Nick Pugh via AMSAT-BB Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 9:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [amsat-bb] fossasat
Has anyone of the list able copy fossasat? nick
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