AMSAT NEWS SERVICE ANS-127
The AMSAT News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and infor- mation service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in Space including reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio operators who share an active interest in designing, building, launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio satellites.
The news feed on http://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.
Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to: ans-editor at amsat.org.
In this edition:
* AMSAT at the Dayton Hamvention -- Call for volunteers * Hamvention Instructor's Forum to Feature Space Weather and AMSAT-NA * 2017 AMSAT-NA Board of Directors Nominations Notice * RadFxSat/Fox-1B Launch Moves Left * UBSEDS24 Balloon with SSDV – 2nd Launch Attempt, 8 May * AMSAT Sweden Celebrates 35 Years * Ciaran Morgan, M0XTD, and ARISS-UK Team Awarded the Louis Varney Cup
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-127.01 ANS-127 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 127.01 From AMSAT HQ KENSINGTON, MD. DATE May 7, 2017 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-127.01
AMSAT at the Dayton Hamvention -- Call for volunteers
The Dayton Hamvention is less than two weeks away, May 19-21!
If you’ve been waiting to volunteer until you’d firmed up your plans, we need to hear from you ASAP!
If you're an experienced satellite operator, we can use you and your experience.
If you've never operated a satellite before, we can use your help too.
Whether you're available for only a couple of hours or if you can spend the entire weekend with us, your help would be greatly appreciated.
Please send an e-mail to Steve, [email protected] if you can help. Thank you!
[ANS thanks Steve, N9IP, Dayton Team Leader, for the above information]
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Hamvention Instructor's Forum to Feature Space Weather and AMSAT-NA
Carole Perry, WB2MGP, who may be Amateur Radio's premier supporter of youth, will moderate her 30th Hamvention Youth Forum later this month, when Hamvention® convenes for the first time at its new venue in Xenia, Ohio, May 19-21.
The Youth Forum is set for Saturday, May 20, 9:15 AM until noon, in Room 2. She's lined up nine young presenters who will speak on a variety of topics of interest to radio amateurs of all ages. The Youth Forum is open to all. AMSAT-NA will donate Gould Smith's just revised "Getting Started with Amateur Satellites" (book printed in color) to the Youth Forum presenters.
Carole will also conduct her Hamvention Instructors' Forum on Friday, May 19, 10:30-11:30 AM, in Room 3. "Space Weather Woman" Dr. Tamitha Skov will speak on "Teaching Space Weather" and AMSAT-NA Vice President, Educational Relations, Joe Spier, K6WAO, will present "NxtGen Crystal Radio". Joe will have 10 kits consisting of RTL-SDRs, pre-amps, connectors, cables, 2M EZ-Lindenblad antennas, FoxTelem software, and instructions to create a FOX Telemetry Ground Station for educators at the Instructors' Forum on Friday.
[ANS thanks the Hamvention 2017 Team, the ARRL Letter for May 4th, and Carole Perry, WB2MGP for the above information]
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2017 AMSAT-NA Board of Directors Nominations Notice
It's time to submit nominations for the upcoming AMSAT-NA Board of Directors election. Four directors' terms expire this year: Barry Baines, WD4ASW, Jerry Buxton, N0JY, Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, and Bob McGwier, N4HY. In addition, up to two Alternates may be elected for one year terms.
A valid nomination requires either one Member Society or five current individual members in good standing to nominate an AMSAT-NA member for Director. Written nominations, consisting of the nominee's name and call, and the nominating individual's names, calls and individual signatures should be mailed to: AMSAT-NA, 10605 Concord St, #304 Kensington, MD 20895-2526.
In addition to traditional submissions of written nominations, which is the preferred method, the intent to nominate someone may be made by electronic means. These include e-mail, fax, or electronic image of a petition. Electronic petitions should be sent to [email protected] or faxed to (301)822-4371.
No matter what means is used, petitions MUST arrive no later than June 15th at the AMSAT-NA office. If the nomination is a traditional written nomination, no other action is required. If it is other than this, i.e. electronic, a verifying traditional written petition MUST be received at the AMSAT-NA office at the above address within 7 days following the close of nominations on June 15th.
ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS WITHOUT THIS SECOND, WRITTEN VERIFICATION ARE NOT VALID UNDER THE EXISTING AMSAT-NA BYLAWS.
[ANS thanks Paul, N8HM, for the above information]
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RadFxSat/Fox-1B Launch Moves Left
In the world of secondary payloads we're all used to launches moving to the right as issues with the primary payload and launch vehicles or their schedules often occur. But what is a move to the left?
The RadFxSat/Fox-1B launch had been recently announced as NET September 23, 2017. Today, the primary payload JPSS-1 moved to the left and we can now announce a new launch date of NET September 21, 2017 for RadFxSat and all of the other ELaNa XIV mission payloads.
That's "only" two whole days earlier, true, but with all of our Fox-1 launches having been on a steady march to the right since (and including, at the time) AO-85/Fox-1A was launched, we'll take what we can get!
[ANS Jerry, N0JY, for the above information]
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UBSEDS24 Balloon with SSDV – 2nd Launch Attempt, 8 May
Richard Meadows M0SBU reports there will be a second attempt to launch the Raspberry Pi Zero equipped 434 MHz balloon UBSEDS24 early Monday morning.
On the UKHAS Google Group Richard writes:
There’s going to be another attempt to launch this flight from Bristol this Monday, May 8 between 0500 and 0530 BST [0400-0430 GMT]. This is weather permitting, but the forecast looks okay at the moment.
This launch is using a 1.9m envelope and longer payload train, and so there’s a NOTAM in place. This tracker has a Raspberry Pi Zero V1.3 attached, which transmits images when solar power is available. It’s a different design to our launch last August; in this case the tracker will continue to operate even if the pi fails. For the curious the ‘pi status’ telemetry values are: 0 = off, 1 = on, 2 = PITS started, 3 = SSDV started).
There will hopefully be a cutdown mounted between the balloon and the tracker. We’ll be testing the 434 MHz uplink to this whilst it’s still in range of Bristol; if it returns over the UK at a convenient time and place we will attempt to trigger the cutdown.
The tracker has several transmissions:
– 434.635 MHz USB Telemetry – Contestia 16/1000 with pips and RSID, transmitting telemetry. Once per minute below 8km altitude and every two minutes otherwise.
– 434.637.5 MHz SSDV – Two modes: (1) While balloon over UK and English channel GMSK at 12 ksymbol/s. 4×4 interleaved, R=1/2 convolutional K=5, HDLC framing, whitened etc. as per the AX5043 manual. Concatenated with RS(255,223) to mop up some burst errors. (2) Outside UK 300 baud RTTY, 850 Hz shift, 8N2.
If you are listening to the RTTY, remember to turn off the ‘RxID’ button on the top right of dl-fldigi.
Rather than the usual JPEG SSDV, this is transmitting Better Portable Graphics (BPG) images. This is experimental, and ssdv.habhub.org doesn’t support it just yet. Hence receivers should upload to http://ssdv.bristol-seds.co.uk instead, please read the instructions on this site. You’ll need dl-fldigi release 3.2, as explained on the site. James Coxon M6JCX has made the dl-fldigi release available at: https://github.com/jamescoxon/dl-fldigi/releases/tag/3.2
The flight is expected to head south towards France. Many thanks to everyone who attempts to track this.
Track the balloon online at https://tracker.habhub.org/
Listen to the balloon online with the SUWS WebSDR link at https://amsat-uk.org/beginners/balloons/
UBSEDS http://www.bristol-seds.co.uk/
[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above information]
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AMSAT Sweden Celebrates 35 Years
AMSAT-SM (Sweden) has been active in 35 years 2017. AMSAT-SM was founded April 24:th 1982 by a group of swedish hams. The first AMSAT-SM president was SM5IXE Thomas Johansson.
One AMSAT-SM's objectives is to inform Swedish hams about the fun with amateur satellites! Not many SM hams are active via satellite at the moment. With the help of their Swedish webpage and HF-net it is hoped that more Swedish hams should be using amateur satellites.
The AMSAT-SM annual meeting is held every spring. Some weeks on Sundays we have a HF-net on 80 meters with lots of news about satellites and space.
Today AMSAT-SM has aprox. 200 members and we have an active news feed via web, Twitter and Youtube. So, we are still alive and kicking!
http://www.amsat.se/english-info/ https://twitter.com/amsat_sm https://www.youtube.com/AMSATSM
[ANS thanks Lars, SM0TGU, for the above information]
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Ciaran Morgan, M0XTD, and ARISS-UK Team Awarded the Louis Varney Cup
Ciaran Morgan, M0XTD, and the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) UK Team were awarded the Louis Varney Cup on April 22 at the RSGB 90th Annual General Meeting in Cardiff, Wales. RSGB recognized Morgan and the ARISS- UK team for advances in space communications. Accepting the trophy were Graham Shirville, G3VZV; Noel Matthews, G8GTZ, and John Cariss, G7ACD.
The award’s namesake, Louis Varney, G5RV, was the inventor of the world-famous G5RV antenna and an RSGB member for 74 years. Varney died in 2000.
Morgan and the ARISS-UK team have also been fundraising on behalf of ARISS.
[ANS thanks ARRL for the above information]
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In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the President's Club. Members of the President's Club, as sustaining donors to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive addi- tional benefits. Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office.
Primary and secondary school students are eligible for membership at one-half the standard yearly rate. Post-secondary school students enrolled in at least half time status shall be eligible for the stu- dent rate for a maximum of 6 post-secondary years in this status. Contact Martha at the AMSAT Office for additional student membership information.
73, This week's ANS Editor, Lee McLamb, KU4OS ku4os at amsat dot org