--- On Tue, 30/4/13, Nick Pugh quadpugh@bellsouth.net wrote:

Both Pumpkin and ISSIS say they have flight heritage on 50 watt panels. EaLanta has rides to 600 KM

50 watts on a CubeSat ? That surprises me, I don't know of any that have flown so far that have generated more than about 6 watts of Solar Power. When you say "flight heritage" which CubeSat is being referred to ?

A free ELaNa CubeSat launch would mean partnering with an educational institution so part of the 3U and some of the solar power would have to be reserved for their payload.

and we will have to deal with MR Van Allen when we get there.

Hopefully deal with it by design on the ground first ;-)

RS-15 (beacon 29.325 MHz) has been in the lower part (2,158 by 1,900 km orbit) of the radiation belt for over 18 years.

73 Trevor M5AKA

--- On Wed, 1/5/13, M5AKA m5aka@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

Date: Wednesday, 1 May, 2013, 7:53 --- On Tue, 30/4/13, g0mrf@aol.com g0mrf@aol.com wrote:

...

A compromise could be 4 Watts (ish) from MEO. Here's an oldie but goodie..... http://www.g0mrf.com/MEOSAT.htm

Yes MEO would be good. It should be possible to improve the signal levels while keeping omni-directional antennas on the satellite by using lower frequencies bands.

A 144 to 50 MHz (if we can get an allocation there) transponder or 144 to 28 MHz would have a significantly reduced path loss on the downlink (8 dB ?) compared to 435/145.

73 Trevor M5AKA