AMSAT NEWS SERVICE ANS-245
ANS is a free, weekly, news and information service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS 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.
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******************* AMSAT 2007 Space Symposium *************************
The Wireless Association of South Hills Amateur Radio Club announces the 2007 AMSAT Space Symposium will be held at the Pittsburgh Airport Marriott Hotel on Friday, October 26 through Sunday, October 28, 2007. The AMSAT web team has posted informational pages on the AMSAT web site. You can find the announcement with many links at: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/symposium/2007/index.php
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In this edition: * AMSAT Presentation at HAMCON, Torrance, CA * AMSAT Board of Directors Election Deadline * OSCAR-11 Report 31 August 2007 * Satellite Shorts From All Over * ARISS Status - 27 August 2007
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-245.01 AMSAT Presentation at HAMCON, Torrance, CA
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 245.01 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 2, 2007 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-245.01
AMSAT member Clint Bradford, K6LCS, will be presenting his "Working AO-51 with your HT" multimedia session at the HAMCON convention Friday, September 7, 2007 in Torrance, California.
He'll be speaking during the Long Beach Amateur Radio Club's special 5:00pm meeting at the Marriott Hotel Convention Center, 3635 Fashion Way, Torrance, CA, 90503-4809. Attendees should download his 4-page tutorial and radio programming matrix before the meeting from http://www.clintbradford.com.
There will be a workable pass of AO-51 right after the meeting!
Clint has been a licensed amateur (and GMRS Licensee KAF3359) since 1994, and has been involved in public service communication for most of that time.
He owns an award winning Web site on the JFK assassination. Professionally, he was sales manager for ADI/ Premier/Pryme, worked for Motorola, and for HRO. He proudly supports AMSAT at all his presentations.
Clint resides in Mira Loma with his wife Karen, her Icelandic horse Mjollnir, and Clint's donkey, Edaward R. Burro.
[ANS thanks JoAnne, K9JKM, for the above information]
/EX
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-245.02 AMSAT Board of Directors Election Deadline
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 245.02 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 2, 2007 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-245.02
This is a reminder for all AMSAT members who have not yet returned their ballot. This is your chance to "voice your choice". Let us know who you want to represent you on the AMSAT Board of Directors. It is not too late to ask the candidates questions. Ballots must be received in Silver Spring by September 15th.
[ANS thanks Martha for the above information]
/EX
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-245.03 OSCAR-11 Report 31 August 2007
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 245.03 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 2, 2007 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-245.03
During the period 15 July to 31 August 2007, The satellite has remained silent. Eclipses finished on 20 August. Previous observations indicated that anytime after 10 August there would have been sufficient solar power to support continuous operation.
Owing to the lack of accurate timings, it is impossible to predict when sustained beacon operation will restart, although this is expected any day now. When the beacon starts it is expected to operate 10 days ON followed by 10 days OFF.
The satellite is now in continuous sunlight, and this will continue until 14 November, when a short eclipse season starts.
I have received one reception report, from Jim G3WGM, who heard weak signals at the end of a pass on 01 August. Many thanks JIM.
The Beacon frequencies are -
VHF 145.826 MHz. AFSK FM ASCII Telemetry UHF 435.025 MHz. OFF S-band 2401.5 MHz. OFF
Listeners to OSCAR-11 may be interested in visiting my website. The current monthly bulletin contains further details of the satellite's status. If you need to know what OSCAR-11 should sound like, there is a short audio clip for you to hear. The website contains an archive of news & telemetry data. It also contains details about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture. There is software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry. The URL is www.users.zetnet.co.uk/clivew/
If you place this bulletin on a terrestrial packet network, please use the bulletin identifier $BID:U2RPT136.CWV, to prevent duplication.
73 Clive G3CWV [email protected] (please replace xxxxx by g3cwv)
[ANS thanks Clive, G3CWV, for the above information]
/EX
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-245.04 Satellite Shorts From All Over
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 245.04 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 2, 2007 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-245.04
+ Eric, W4OTN, AMSAT Area Coordinator for Southeastern Virginia is proposing creating a Satellite Islands on the Air (IOTA) award. He is currently in the process of collecting comments to support his request to the IOTA Board. If you are interested in supporting this new award please submit your comments to Eric via: http://eric-sparks.blogspot.com/2007/08/official-iota-satellite-award- petition.html (careful with the line-wrap!)
+ Ed, WA4SWJ Editor of The AMSAT Journal reported this week that the July/August issue of the Journal was uploaded to the printer on August 28. This issue should be on its way to your mailbox shortly.
+ Information about an ESA student project with a 30 kilometre tether which will perform a deorbit manoeuvre of a capsule is now available on-line at http://www.yes2.info/. This is scheduled to fly in late September. The tether is expected to be visible over parts of Africa the Middle East, South America (below 55°S), Antarctic Peninsula (above 82°S), and Eastern Russia and western Alaska (above 170°E).
+ The Smallsat conference held in August published the abstracts from the papers presented including one by Kyle Leveque KG6TXT`on GENSO - the Global Educational Network for Satellite Operators. He will be presenting a further update on this network at the AMSAT Symposium in October. See http://www.smallsat.org/tech-sessions for more information.
+ The presentation slides from the CalPoly Summer Workshop are available at http://cubesat.atl.calpoly.edu/pages/workshops/2007-summer-workshop.php, Included is an update on the Delfi-C3 sunlight only U/V transponder mission due for launch from India later this year.
+ The ARRL Great Lakes Division Convention is being held on Saturday, September 22, 2007 at the Sheraton Independence Hotel in Independence, Ohio. This is near Cleveland. Jim Sanford, WB4GCS will be making a presentation on AMSAT's Eagle Satellite. More information about the convention can be found at: http://www.2007gldc.org/.
[ANS thanks JoAnne, K9JKM, for the above information]
/EX
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-245.05 ARISS Status - 27 August 2007
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 245.05 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. September 2, 2007 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-245.05
1. ARISS Contact with Nanjing, China, a Huge Success
On Sunday, August 26, the first Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact with a Chinese school was performed with youth from Nanjing No. 3 High School in Nanjing, Jiangsu. Twenty students spoke with astronaut Clay Anderson, KD5PLA. Twenty questions were asked and answered as approximately 300 students and parents looked on. A vice-director of MII (Chinese FCC) was present during the contact, as well as a vice mayor of Nanjing and a group of 60 local government officials. Mr. Chen, BA1HAM, and Mr.Tong, BA1AA, two of the veterans in Chinese Amateur Radio Society, also attended. Local hams and businesses supported the students with the contact. ARISS Chairman Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, was invited to speak via teleconference to the students and other participants prior to the contact. Ten television stations, including local, provincial, and national stations, as well as another television team from Hong Kong reported on the event. The news story was also picked up by several radio stations, and was broadcasted live in several provinces across China. It was also covered by thirty newspapers. Live video of the contact was also available on sina.com and qq.com, which are two major internet news portals in China, and they also put the contact on their front pages as featured reports. A headline about the upcoming school contact in China was posted on the MSN startup window, so every Chinese MSN messenger user would see this notice. Many other websites published their own press releases. Through all media avenues, more than 100 million people were reached!
The audio for this event was fed into EchoLink AMSAT (101 377), JSDXC (337 784) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers, receiving 106 connections from 10 countries, of which five were repeater nodes. (A fourth server in Bangkok was also used, although it was not monitored for connections.) The audio was also fed into the IRLP Discovery Reflector 9010 and received 5 connections and another 9 picked up on the streaming audio. Several press releases may be viewed on the following sites: http://www.lifeofguangzhou.com/node_10/node_37/node_85/2007/08/20/1187575802... www.nanjing.gov.cn/pub/english/today/njnew/society/200708/t20070808_219253.htm http://en.0437.gov.cn/dispArticle.Asp?ID=1581 http://nanjingbbs.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7973 http://english.qianlong.com/article1.jsp?oid=23244189 http://en.implight.net/node/54595 http://www.ariss.cn/ (video)
2. Upcoming School Contacts
Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin, Illinois has been slated for an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact on Wednesday, September 5 at 18:38 UTC. A multi-media educational exhibit entitled, “SPACE: Dare to Dream,” will be on display for four months and is expected to draw 350,000 people of all ages. The exhibit will include the Forest of Dreams where the night sky rises, Galileo’s studios, and a Saturn V section. Other NASA exhibits will be on display, all to encourage the public to join the library’s reading program – “Mission: Read.” In addition to these ongoing displays, many special programs with presentations and hands on activities will be offered throughout the summer. Veteran astronaut Dr. Janice Voss visited on July 10. On the day of the event, space videos will be shown and a slideshow of the crew and earth observation photos will be presented during the contact. In concluding the event, the staff will run the video, “NASA back to the Moon.” The collaborative exhibit and program partners are Adler Planetarium, Chicago, IL; Fermilab, Batavia, IL; Planetary Studies Foundation, Galena, IL; Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art, Elmhurst, IL; NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH; SciTech, Aurora, IL. Extensive media coverage is planned through newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the internet.
3. ARISS International Meeting Held
The monthly Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) International Team teleconference was held on Tuesday, August 21. Topics discussed included the Malaysian space participant, SuitSat-2 and Columbus Module antennas. The minutes have been posted to the ARISS website. See: http://www.rac.ca/ariss/arisstel2007-08-21.htm
[ANS thanks Carol, KB3LKI, for the above information]
/EX
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 additional benefits. Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office.
73, This week's ANS Editor, Lee McLamb, KU4OS ku4os at amsat dot org