Mark,

My name is Jim McCullers and I’ll be working on the PACSAT project.  I’m certain you will grow tired of my endless questions!

I was not active during the ‘packet’ era and so am doing a lot of catching up including equipping my station for packet.

At the moment we are in the early stages of conceptual design and appreciate any and all input.

No decision has been made as to the actual configuration but that is the next step.  Up/down frequencies, power and baud rate are at the top of the list.

Thanks for your comments on the power required for 9600 downlink.  I was not aware of the power required which will work into the available board space.

I need to talk with Bill about scheduling Falconsat-3 and thanks for the information about the orbit degradation.

I’m in Birmingham, Alabama and see a lot of good passes.  Hopefully, Falconsat-3 will last a bit longer and we can gather good information from it as well as learn the process of using a pacsat.

Jim McCullers

WA4CWI

Hello  PACSAT Team---it was great to learn about this project from Jonathan at the recent AMSAT Symposium.  I'm delighted to hear that you're working on a PACSAT version of something new...

It was the original microsats/pacsats project and launch that got me interested in satellite communications, so I've been doing it for a while.  Happy to give opinions or suggestions when needed--don't be afraid to ask. 

My question--is there one day each week where you'd like me to turn ON 

Falconsat-3 for about 24 hours of operations?   I think it'll take this 'abuse' for a while; it's predicted to reenter around April next year, so we have a few months before it's gone....

Putting the satellite on an operation schedule will help people know when to expect it to be on.  I though you all might enjoy listening/working it, making recordings, tests, whatever, while we still have it working.  A challenge is that the orbit precesses like 30 mins per day, so eventually it shifts where all passes are during the sleeping hours...so there will some weeks where it might not be turned on...

So, can you all pick the day when you'd like it on?  I'll do my best to keep it going per schedule...Drew KO4MA is also on the list, and he'll help as needed I'm sure.    

Both of us are interested in an outline/overview of what you all imagine.  I think I learned 1200 AFSK uplink (four frequencies/channels), 9600 baud FSK downlink.  My preferred is 2M uplink, 70cm downlink (since it's so quiet).  It'll take about 500mw to 1W on the downlink to be useable at 9600.  Even more is desirable or necessary if you want to go higher than 9600...  I think I'm one of the remaining dinosaurs that has experience and equipment to do 38k4 on the downlink...although wideband SDRs has changed that! 

73!

Mark L. Hammond [N8MH]  (formerly KC4EBR)

AMSAT Director and Command Station