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Ham Satellite news

SO-43

Farewell SO-43 — SK tonight

Tonite sees the re-entry of a very interesting amateur satellite — SO-43(21 Jan 2003 @ 04:37 UTC, in the Pacific west of Costa Rica).

Many of you who were at the AMSAT meeting in Portland,Maine a couple of years ago remember a paper presented by Gil Moore, N7YTK describing the STARSHINE program — Disco Ball mirror satellites that were designed to foster interest in Space Science by the youth. Students all around the world polished the individual mirrors for the
satellites. Gil — who looks like a pirate with a black patch over his left eye — told us that STARSHINE-3 would carry a small amateur telemetry beacon on 145.825 MHz. The satellite,along with PCSAT NO-44 was launched on the first successful Agena launch from Kodiak Island in late September, 2001. The story is told at

http://www.onr.navy.mil/events/starshine/default.htm,
www.azinet.com/starshine/starshine3.html and
http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast09oct_1.htm.

When STARSHINE-3 was placed into orbit, it became Starshine Oscar-43 as
documented on the AMSAT web site at
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/n7hpr/history.html:

Klla: amsat

Categories
Ham Satellite news

SO50 QSO över EU

SO50 worked over Europe by G8ATE&OZ1MY this afternoon.

Hi all
I managed to work Ib ,OZ1MY, this afternoon on the 1338utc pass over Europe, signals were a lot weaker than AO27.

Though! so a very good Rx setup is required,uplink power used was about 2 watts into a 6 element Quad .Is this the first European QSO via SO50 I wonder???????????

Regards Robert G8ATE

Klla: amsat bb

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Nya Oscar nummer

Safir-M har ftt Oscar nummer AO-49 och Saudisat 1C har ftt Oscar 50.

Det har hnt mycket sedan Oscar 1 sndes upp i slutet av 1961 och amatrer runt jordklotet lyssnade till dom 140 milliwatten frn beaconen.

Klla: amsat-bb

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Ham Satellite news

AO27 igång igen

Det rapporteras att AO27 har s pass batterispnning igen s den r aktiv. (samma frekvens som saudisat)

73 Hkan SM7WSJ

Klla: amsat-bb

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Nyheter från ANS-005

Hr kommer nyhetssammanfattning frn ANS:

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-005.03
AO-40 OPERATING SCHEDULE UPDATE

Stacey Mill, W4SM, provided the following update on AO-40 s operating schedule. The power budget allows us to extend the passband time by 10 MA s on each end and we have activated the 24 GHz K-band transmitter.
From MA 126 to 128 both the S2 and K middle beacons only will be active. From MA 128 to 132 both the S2 & K transmitters will be active on the U/L uplink passbands. Stacey said. He continues, The last time the K-Tx was active, it was noted to have suffered a partial power loss suggesting that one of the output transistors may have failed. We will monitor its function to see if this condition has changed. Stacey also requested that K-band successes and failures be reported to the AMSAT-BB.

Stacey also noted that, We are holding ALON/ALAT at nominal 0/0, but ALAT has been drifting slightly positive (~1 deg), which will slightly favor northern hemisphere users.

[ANS thanks Stacey, W4SM, for the above information]

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-005.04
AO-40 RUDAK OPERATIONS

During the week of Christmas the RUDAK team has concentrated on getting software loaded after the long period of quite time when there was inadequate power to run RUDAK and the experiments.

A task to record all activity on the CAN bus was loaded and run on the B processor while the CAN server and CEDEX task were run on the A. The CAN logging task files and the CEDEX task files were downloaded and are being analyzed to diagnose the problem that has prevented collection and logging of CEDEX data since December, 2001.

During the Christmas eve and day windows it was determined both RUDAK processors had crashed back to the boot loader and reloading was begun. An initial attempt to reload A failed and the short window prevented further diagnosis.

Some testing on the new windows based command software was accomplished and a few changes have been made. This is an important activity because it forms the basis for telemetry and command software for future AMSAT-NA satellites including ECHO and Eagle. Again, however, the short RUDAK window prevented complete testing.

Further load and diagnosis activities will be undertaken during the next available window.

[ANS thanks Jim, WD0E, for the above information]

Klla: ANS-005

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Nytt schema, längre passbandstider

Information frn AMSAT-UK och AMSAT-DL:

Schedule updated. The power budget allows an extention of passband time by 10 MA s on each end.

Stacey reports: The AO-40 schedule has been modified to activate the 24 GHz K-band transmitter. From MA 126 to 128 both the S2 and K middle beacons only will be active. From MA 128 to 132 both the S2 & K transmitters will be active on the U/L uplink passbands. The last time the K-Tx was active, it was noted to have suffered a partial power loss suggesting that one of the output transistors may have failed. We will monitor its function to see if this condition has changed. Please report your successes/failures to the amsat-bb. We are holding ALON/ALAT at nominal 0/0, but ALAT has been drifting slightly positive (~1 deg), which will slightly favor northern hemisphere users.

Klla: AMSAT-DL, AMSAT-UK