Hi Bob and other interested parties,
I've just now, 17th Dec 2007 10:22 UTC, attempted to copy ANDE as it goes over for maybe one of the last times for this location.
It was an almost perfect pass here in Wellington, New Zealand, with a maximum elevation of about 78 degrees per Nova, using keps from Space-Track that are about 13 hours old.
I was late getting set up, so it took some time to get the TNC within my rig (Kenwood TS-2000) set up, and remembering how to set the UNPROTO path (*1).
Anyway, on sending a few "Hi" and "Hello" prompts (*2), I did hear ANDE digirepeat me, and maybe some extra packets too. Sadly, the signal was very noisy, and I got no valid decodes at any time. So no telemetry, which I had hoped to get.
However, it seemed clear that ANDE is still there and operational for now, and arrived and left about as expected, as reported by Nova. I think this was my first attempt with ANDE, and it seemed I should have a go before it was too late. Well, I did hear it, and I believe it heard me, but I can't prove that. It was sending, so it heard someone :-)
My antenna for 2m, is some 12 elements, and somewhat sharp on pointing direction, and I have too much coax (near 20 m of RG213), so unless my pointing is right on, I always get poor copy. I expect the difference between what NOVA was predicting, the actual pass time, and my manually moving the rotator to match the numbers, was asking too much.
(My setup as above works well enough to work AO-51, and VO-52 if I chase the Doppler. I can normally decode telemetry from AO-51 at 9600 baud or ISS at 1200 baud.)
Maybe thanks to Bob and the team for another resource that we Amateurs can share. In this case, I think I left it way too late, but at least I heard it once.
Regards, Jim, ZL1TYF Wellington New Zealand.
Notes
(*1) Setting UNPROTO for a TS-2000. In command mode with the TNC, "DISP" will display all current settings. Most important is to set callsign with "MYCALL <callsign>" And for APRS, set the path with "UNPROTO APRS VIA ARISS" "K" to enter converse mode Type a message. In my case "Hello" or something. And then, CLOSE the SQL control to permit the TNC to xmit, then open again to listen. Darn! I wish there was some setting for this, but don't know of a fix for this. The Kenwood TS-2000 won't send a packet if the SQL is open.
(*2) Normally sending multiple packets to an APRS sat would be a bad thing, but check your map for New Zealand. We are in the middle of oceans all around, and very few hams in the ANDE footprint have operation packet etc, so I'm saying it was OK in this case. On a typical AO-51 pass, any station that comes on is the ONLY one there. Its not always possible to find anyone else. Totally different from when the birds are over North America or Europe etc, and sharing is a critical usage issue.
-----Original Message----- From: amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bruninga Sent: Friday, 14 December 2007 1:27 p.m. To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [amsat-bb] ANDE warming, Telemetry and Re-entry
Yes, looks like ANDE will be a re-entry Xmas present.