Hello All,
Power up that L-band transmitter!
AO-51 is about 2 days away from full sun. On-board temperatures are climbing, and it looks like we have just enough power to try to run both repeaters. It will take some tweaking of various power management parameters, and we'll see how things go. Right now 435.300 is at 420mW and 435.150 is at 300mW.
Expect interruptions for telemetry collection by command stations; we'll try to keep the impact down to a minimum. You may also see the transmitters shutting off as we run right on the edge of the power budget. They should come back on when the batteries get a bit more juice in them. Both transmitters will be off during eclipses (which won't last much longer).
We'll probably run dual repeaters until Sunday 27 Feb 2011. There is only about 3 weeks of full sun, then eclipses return.
Dust off your S-band downconverters and antennas! We'll try to fit in some S-band activity before eclipses return (approx. 14 March or so).
As of 21 Feb 2011 2145utc:
Dual Voice Repeaters
Mode V/U FM Voice Repeater (no PL tone needed) Uplink: 145.920 MHz FM Downlink 435.300 MHz FM
Mode L/U FM Voice Repeater (no PL tone needed) Uplink: 1268.700 MHz FM Downlink 435.150 MHz FM
On behalf of the command team,
Mark L. Hammond [N8MH]