Category: Ham Satellite news

På PE1ITR hemsida finns en presentation från AMSAT-DL årsmöte med en del intressanta bilder och information om Es’Hailsat. Använd Google translate om du inte kan holländska 🙂

Falconsat-3 som sköts upp 2007 har nu gått över till amatörradiobruk. Tyvärr kan vi inte höra den i Sverige pga. dess bana men stor aktivitet rapporteras på Twitter.

Falconsat-3 is Now Open for Amateur Radio Use

The Air Force Academy satellite Falconsat-3 is now open for amateur 
radio use as a digital store-and-forward system. FalconSAT-3 was 
built in 2005 and 2006 by cadets and faculty in the Space Systems 
Research Center at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, 
and launched in 2007 on an Atlas V. 

After serving in scientific and training roles, the Academy has 
now made the satellite available for Amateur radio use.

The satellite is in a 35.4 degree inclination orbit, with an 
approximate altitude of 465 to 476 km. The Packet Bulletin Board 
System is operating at 9600 baud with a 145.840 uplink, and 
435.103 downlink. Output power is 1 watt, and the downlink is con-
tinuously on. Digipeating is enabled for live QSOs, but unattended 
digipeating operations is not authorized at this time. Current 
Keplerian elements can be found in the AMSAT distributed Keplerian 
elements.

More information can be found at https://www.amsat.org/falconsat-3/ 
and further operational inquiries should be directed to AMSAT Vice
President Operations, Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA (ko4ma@amsat.org).

[ANS thanks AMSAT Vice President Operations, Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA for the
above information]

English summary below!

Wisnu YB0AZ skickade lite information och en video till AMSAT-SM om deras contest via satelliten IO-86:

The LAPAN A2, also known as LAPAN-ORARI, was launched on September 28th 2015.
It carries a payload of amateur radio FM voice repeater and an APRS digipeater for radio amateur communications.
After launch, it received the designation IO 86 or Indonesia-OSCAR 86.
This satellite also carries an AIS (Automatic Identification System) to identify the ships and a video camera with a range three times wider than the previous Lapan satellite (Lapan Tubsat).
The IO86 satellite orbit the Earth along the equator with an altitude of 650 kilometers, and travel at 7.5 kilometers per second – enabling it to circle the Earth 14 times a day.
To celebrating its 2 years anniversary, the Indonesian National Institute for Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) and the Indonesian Amateur Radio Organization (ORARI) make some events.
One of the event is the radio amateur communications contest via the IO86 satellite during 22 September 2017 08:00 UTC until 24 September 2017 17:00 UTC.
The exchanges are RS + Grid Locator.
The calculation of points is based on how many QSOs you can made and how long the distance that you can reach through the IO86 satellite.
We called it the World’s First Equatorial Amsat Contest because as we knew it’s the first contest in the world via the Equatorial amateur satellite.
That’s my explanation Felix and please don’t hesitate to email me if you have more questions.
73 de Wisnu YBØAZ

In order to have a full duplex portable satellite station you must have two transceivers or one transmitting rig, like the FT817ND, and one receiver. But how about using your mobile Android phone and a RTL-SDR dongle? I have tested SDRTouch with my Samsung Galaxy 5 and a RTL-SDR.com V3.

I also needed an OTG-cable with extra power jack (1 US$ on eBay) as my phone could drive the RTL by itself. The red little box is a USB Power Bank that powers the SDR.

And yes, it works… kind of. Installation of SDRTouch is very simple and after downloading drivers for the RTL-SDR everything works without any configuration.

But this is not a solution for me. Too much cables hanging around and the navigation in SDRTouch is not so easy. So I will try some other solution, probably a Windows 10 Tablet. Stay tuned for updates…