I sent emails to some of the folks watching for Falconsat-3 and got this nice feedback from Christy Hunter which is interesting to our efforts;
hi Bob, Falconsat-3 is on its final life. Probably will decay in the next couple of months. its fuel storage has been spent and so aiming is not working such that its batteries run low. Mark, N8MH is the control operator and tries to turn it on and posts that action on the AMSAT twitter page. but I see he last did this on the Sept 22. he sometimes lets it stay off so that the batteries can charge. also need to update keps often on this sat, I use celstrak.orghttp://celstrak.org. since its orbit is decaying. it uses the 9600bd packet and was fun while it was active. but not sure when or if it will be active again. too bad, I hope someone comes up with another one. 73 Christy KB6LTY
I just looked at twitter and don’t see anything from Mark.
Corey’s comments were good on modulation. We may need to think more about data rates and modulation. Reading some of the old posting reminds me about the difficulties of getting much data through the earlier Satellites. In the early days everything was done on bulletin boards even AMSAT development. That is until some of us got on the DARPA mail feed. We were also working with VITA and there really was a goal of feeding information to remote areas in Africa. At 1220 baud we were not going to move much information but it was a big step forward at the time. People may expect more today.
Bob
On Sep 24, 2022, at 8:51 AM, James McCullers <[email protected]mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
According to Mark L. Hammond (N8MH) by the way of Rich, Falconsat-3 has to be switched on for use and that last only a short period of time which would explain the lack of reports and interest. I believe someone said it only had a few months to live. Hopefully Bill and I can get set up for packet and make a contact or two before dies. Hands on experience would be beneficial.
I’ve been studying the Pacsat links of AC2CZ’s site as well as his ground station code. You are correct. Some of the terminology and assumptions reflect a bygone era.
While cleaning out a storage closet a year or so ago I threw away an original 8 inch IBM floppy from about 1975. It truly flopped!
Jim McCullers WA4CWI
All,
Here is an interesting Pacat link maintained by Chris Thompson AC2CZ. You will see copies of some of the original papers by Harold Price and Jeff Ward and others. It's a trip back though history. Harold mentions the IBM PC and I can remember I had a S100 system at this time with 8 inch floppies.
Looking at the AMSAT activity tracker I see Falconsat-3 has no heard reports in a while and a few people are looking.
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