OSCAR-11 REPORT 04 March 2011

OSCAR-11 celebrated it's 27th birthday on 01 March! It was designed, built and launched within a period of six months, using commercially available 'off the shelf' components (COTS). Once again, congratulations to Professor Sir Martin Sweeting G3YJO, his team at the University of Surrey and groups of radio amateurs who also contributed to the project. Unfortunately, the satellite wasn't transmitting on its birthday, but resumed transmissions, three days later.

This report covers the period from 31 January to 04 March 2011. During this time the satellite has been heard from 10 to 21 February and from 03 March 2011. It is expected to switch-off again 13 March until 23 March.

Excellent signals have been reported from stations located around the world, and good copy obtained from decoded telemetry frames.

The satellite is now transmitting during eclipses, although signals are weaker at those times. This indicates that there is still some capacity remaining in the battery.

The on-board clock is now very stable. It gained *** seconds during the current reporting period.

The VHF beacon frequency is 145.826 MHz. AFSK FM ASCII Telemetry

At the present time, while OSCAR-11 is operating in a predictable way, I no longer need direct reports or files by e-mail. However, could all listeners continue to enter their reports on the general satellite status website. This is a very convenient and easy to use facility, which shows the current status of all the amateur satellites, and is of use to everyone. Reports around the expected times of switch-on and switch-off are of special interest, especially for times 12:00 - 17:00 and 22:00 - 07:00 UTC, to when the satellite is out-of-range in the UK . The URL is http://oscar.dcarr.org/index.php

A longer version of this report report is available on my website, and new listeners to OSCAR-11 should read this for further information. The URL is www.g3cwv.co.uk/oscar11.htm . This page contains a links to the longer report, a short audio clip to help you identify the satellite and a file of the last telemetry received. The website also contains an archive of news & telemetry data which is updated from time to time, and details about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture. There is also software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry.

If you place this bulletin on a terrestrial packet network, please use the bulletin identifier $BID:U2RPT154.CWV, to prevent duplication.

73 Clive G3CWV xxxxx@amsat.org (please replace the x's by g3cwv)