Hi all, Hello from BWI. First day of talks was great! We enjoyed a nice AMSAT birthday cake, too :) Looks like the talks are being recorded. 73 for now. Mark N8MH
Mark L. Hammond
I saw a CQ packet from PCSAT show up on my Mobile on 144.39 yesterday!
Even I had forgotten that PCSAT does have a downlink on the national APRS terrestrial 144.39 over NOrth America, and if the channel happens to be quiet at the instant it transmits, then you can possibly receive it on your mobile right there along with all the other local traffic!
Sure enough, I quickly QSY'd to its main downlink on 145.825, and there it was...
THen I went back to my LIST to read the packet in detail and it was GONE! Yep, the station was beyond my POSITION LIMIT, and so my radio did not save it.. Drats...
I used to keep posiiton limit turned OFF, so that I could capture these random packets from hundreds or a thousand miles away, but have not done that in years.
A quick check of http://pcsat.aprs.org and www.ariss.net (now 24 hours later) and I can't figure out who it was. The few stations via PCSAT do not match the W1... callsign I thought I saw. I think it was a message. But the message or position report did have the words "PCSAT" in them, and that is what caught my eye on the radio display...
Oh well. SO if you are on the open road far away from heavy activity on 144.39, do not be surprised if you occasionally hear a packet via PCSAT. If you do, then QSY to 145.825 and try to work them.
PCSAT is basically dead, but when it DOES come over during mid-day in the Northern Hemisphere it can sometimes have enough power to relay a packet or two. Being in DEFAULT mode, the 144.39 and 145.825 transmitters are cross-connected and that is why you can sometimes hear it on 144.39 in an uncongested area in North America.
But if you have your mobile POSITION LIMIT set to anything shorter than 1000 miles or more, you may not capture them.
This national downlink to ALL mobiles in the country was a capability we had hoped could be used for ALL-CALL and for emergency message delivery to ANY ham anywhere even if he was not monitoring the satellite downlink.
Since the New-N paradigm, the amount of congestion and collisions on the national channel has gone down somewhat and there are some moments of silence when a weak space packet can get through.
Bob, WB4APR
http://vk4tec.no-ip.org/sat_status/
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Bruninga " bruninga@usna.edu To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2009 10:46 PM Subject: [amsat-bb] PCSAT still kicking
I saw a CQ packet from PCSAT show up on my Mobile on 144.39 yesterday!
Even I had forgotten that PCSAT does have a downlink on the national APRS terrestrial 144.39 over NOrth America, and if the channel happens to be quiet at the instant it transmits, then you can possibly receive it on your mobile right there along with all the other local traffic!
Sure enough, I quickly QSY'd to its main downlink on 145.825, and there it was...
THen I went back to my LIST to read the packet in detail and it was GONE! Yep, the station was beyond my POSITION LIMIT, and so my radio did not save it.. Drats...
I used to keep posiiton limit turned OFF, so that I could capture these random packets from hundreds or a thousand miles away, but have not done that in years.
A quick check of http://pcsat.aprs.org and www.ariss.net (now 24 hours later) and I can't figure out who it was. The few stations via PCSAT do not match the W1... callsign I thought I saw. I think it was a message. But the message or position report did have the words "PCSAT" in them, and that is what caught my eye on the radio display...
Oh well. SO if you are on the open road far away from heavy activity on 144.39, do not be surprised if you occasionally hear a packet via PCSAT. If you do, then QSY to 145.825 and try to work them.
PCSAT is basically dead, but when it DOES come over during mid-day in the Northern Hemisphere it can sometimes have enough power to relay a packet or two. Being in DEFAULT mode, the 144.39 and 145.825 transmitters are cross-connected and that is why you can sometimes hear it on 144.39 in an uncongested area in North America.
But if you have your mobile POSITION LIMIT set to anything shorter than 1000 miles or more, you may not capture them.
This national downlink to ALL mobiles in the country was a capability we had hoped could be used for ALL-CALL and for emergency message delivery to ANY ham anywhere even if he was not monitoring the satellite downlink.
Since the New-N paradigm, the amount of congestion and collisions on the national channel has gone down somewhat and there are some moments of silence when a weak space packet can get through.
Bob, WB4APR
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
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On Sat, 2009-10-10 at 08:46 -0400, Bob Bruninga wrote:
I saw a CQ packet from PCSAT show up on my Mobile on 144.39 yesterday!
Does PCSAT switch between 144.39 and 145.825? I'm reasonably certain I received a packet with W3ADO-1 a few days ago while trying (so far not hugely successfully) to set up APRS for the ISS. Unfortunately I wasn't able to save the dump of the packet.
Gordon MM0YEQ
I saw a CQ packet from PCSAT show up on my Mobile on 144.39 yesterday!
Does PCSAT switch between 144.39 and 145.825? I'm reasonably certain I received a packet with W3ADO-1 a few days ago...
Yes, in the default mode, PCSAT has the transmitters cross-connected to both TNC's. SO if either TNC keys up, it keys up both transmitters. The idea was that this was a failure recovery mode so that we could get a command link to either TNC in case either transmitter failed. Once we had command, then we could disable tthe crossconnect.
Duh... but not if the reason you got there was due to low power. We can command the isolation relay, but then we loose it 45 minutes later when we go into eclipse and we are back to crossconnected.
Bob, Wb4APR
participants (4)
-
Andrew Rich -
Bob Bruninga -
Gordon JC Pearce -
Hammond, Mark