Hi Everybody,
After a 15 year hiatus from being an active satellite operator, I am in the process of pulling my satellite ground station together to operate the various LEO birds that are available to us today. While almost all of the equipment I have is new, I have one vintage item that I would like to put to use in my shack but I am going to need some help. While I was working at SSTL back in the early 90s, I purchased two of the JAMSAT TrakBox kits developed by JA6FTL, JG6MCG, SM0TER et al from AMSAT-UK. As I understand it the kit was made available by TAPR here in the states for a while as well. I built one kit up at the time and sent it to my Dad, KB5ZPK (SK) for him to use in his newly acquired store-and-forward ground station here in Texas. Since I was operating from the Command Center at the University of Surrey, I put the other one aside for use at a later time. Well, the later time turned out to be now and of course since that time the world has dealt with Y2K and all of the associated software upgrades and changes that had to be done. It miraculously appears that I haven't lost any of the components for the kit so from a hardware standpoint I think I am set but I am concerned about the availability of post Y2K software to run in the system. So my question is, can anyone tell me if there is any post Y2K software available for the Trakbox and if so, how can I go about getting a copy of it? While I realize there are now other options available for autotracking, for sentimental reasons I would like to get my kit up and running so any help that I can get would be greatly appreciated.
I look forward to working many of you on the birds once I become QRV.
Thanks for reading my note.
73
Doug Loughmiller, W5BL (EX KO5I, G0SYX)