Category: Ham Satellite news

Uppdatering, det första testet gick inte så bra:

Dear all,

Today we did a first transponder test. We could hear the beacon, but unfortunately did not hear anything back from our calls. Also we were missing the noise floor of the transponder band. Our hypothesis is that our adjustable LO (Si570) which is mixed with the IF band could not be programmed correctly and hence the pass-band goes outside our filtered band (which is a good thing, because we do not want to transmit on illegal frequencies). This LO is adjustable by I2C communication and should be programmed each time at power up (so each time the transponder mode is activated. We will do two attempts more on Friday, February 20 at the morning ground passes and even if that doesn’t help we will keep on trying with different settings. If the situation changes I will update you again.

Best regards,

Jasper, PC4JB

—

Nu meddelar teamet bakom satelliten Delfi-n3Xt att amatörradiotransponders kommer att testas följande dagar:

Thursday 20-02-2014 at about 10:50 UT
Friday 21-02-2014 at about 9:50 UT
Friday 21-02-2014 at about 11:25 UT

Följande frekvenser gäller.
Inverting SSB/CW transponder
• 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
• 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB

Om allt går bra kommer transpondern att användas mera och vi har då en ny satellit med bra QSO-möjligheter. Full info följer:

Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager, Jasper Bouwmeester PC4JB, has announced tests for Feb 20-21 of the Delfi-n3Xt 435/145 MHz linear transponder for amateur radio SSB/CW communications.

Dear radio amateurs,

It has been a while since we have provided an update, so it is time to brief you again.

Delfi-n3Xt Status

The satellite is doing fine and is in healthy shape. We are now almost 3 months in orbit and have fulfilled a major part of the primary mission objectives. This means that we are close to a mission success. This does not mean that everything works flawlessly as there are several subsystems with issues. Given the amount of payloads and new technologies, I can only say that this was to be expected and accounted for in the mission. Delfi satellites are developing platforms and Delfi-n3Xt is an in-orbit test facility. The good thing is that issues encountered are not even a final verdict on the subsystems performance. The attitude determination and control subsystem currently is hampered by a high magnetic noise, but might still be tweaked and tune to see if we can get it to work properly. This however takes some time, so we are glad that the satellite seems to be in healthy state and we can take more time to experiment with it.

DUDe

We are still working on an improved version of DUDe to tackle several issues which we and many of you have discovered and reported. Unfortunately, many of these issues are more difficult to tackle than anticipated and will still take a while before we can release a new solid version of DUDe. One of the main issues is the fact that the software freezes after receiving noise for some time, meaning that DUDe needs to be restarted each time. Attached is a version of DUDe with a dirty fix which resets the PLL every minute. The penalty is that a 1 or 2 frames are lost each minute, so the performance is less than version 5.1. It is however much more convenient for automated ground stations (like our own) and therefore we decided to release this version.

Transponder

We are going to test the transponder functionality of Delfi-n3Xt this week. I have to be honest that this functionality was implemented last minute on the satellite and was only tested briefly in a non-representative setup. I therefore estimate the chance that it will work at 50/50.

Our first test series will be:

Thursday 20-02-2014 at about 10:50 UT

Friday 21-02-2014 at about 9:50 UT

Friday 21-02-2014 at about 11:25 UT

After a few initial tests, and provided that it works, you are free to use the transponder for communication. We will leave it in this mode for the remainder of the sunlit part of the orbit, so only in Europe and Africa it is possible to use this mode for now. If successful we will turn on the transponder more often and for longer periods of time such that everyone can enjoy it.

[Inverting SSB/CW transponder
• 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
• 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB]

S-band Transmitter

There seems to be a problem on the S-band transmitter causing the current protection to kick in occasionally. Maybe this is due to charging or some other effect, as the board is not protected by The Onboard Computer leaves the transmitter off after several attempts as part of an internal safety mechanism. We can still turn on the S-band transmitter through telecommand, but this will only last for a few passes. Most cases the S-band transmitter will thus be off and it reporting that we have turned it might not be very effective since it might be off again by the time you read the message. If you are still interested to try and receive the beacon signal of the S-band, please check the regular telemetry in DUDe under ‘Status’ ’Satellite Status’ ‘Subsystem Status STX’ to see if it is actually on.

J. (Jasper) Bouwmeester PC4JB, MSc.
Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager &
Researcher Small Satellite Technology
Chair of Space Systems Engineering
Delft University of Technology

IARU coordinated Delfi-n3Xt frequencies
• 145.870 MHz Telemetry
• 145.930 MHz Telemetry
• 2405.00 MHz High speed data
• Inverting SSB/CW transponder
– 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
– 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB

Telemetry reception http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/delfi-n3xt-telemetry-reception

Delfi-n3Xt http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/radio-amateurs

Dnepr Yasny launch http://amsat-uk.org/satellites/dnepr-november-2013/

Då har vi fått ännu en satellit med ett riktigt “amatörradionamn”. Det är CAPE II som nu uppfyller kraven för att kallas en OSCAR. Namnet blir OSCAR 75 eller LO-75. Läs mer:

OSCAR Number Administrator Bill Tynan, W3XO announced the University
of Louisiana’s CAPE II cubesat has been designated as University of
Louisiana OSCAR 75 or LO-75.

Bill wrote to AMSAT mentor Nick Pugh, K5QXJ, and the CAPE II cubesat
team, “I have been able to determine CAPE II has met all of the
requirements  for an OSCAR number. By the authority vested in me by
the AMSAT-NA president, I hereby issue CAPE II the designation Uni-
versity of Louisiana OSCAR 75 or LO-75. I, and all of the amateur
satellite community, wish LO-75 the best of success”.

CAPE II operates on 145.825 MHz with a CW beacon  with the callsign
W5UL, it also includes a digipeater, text to speech operation, a
simplex repeater, email and tweet functions. The ground station soft-
ware can be downloaded from http://www.ulcape.org

FUNCube was recently issued OSCAR designation as AO-73. CubeBug-2
was designated as LO-74.

[ANS thanks Bill Tynan, W3XO for the above information]

 

Nu börjar det kablas ut nyheten att Kinas Lilla månbil har vaknat till liv och sänder signaler från månen.

En av dom radioamatörer som har hört signalerna från månlandaren samt även den lilla månbilen är SM7FWZ.

Ronny har även tagit mot signaler från sonderna Stereo A och stereo B som befinner sig på andra sidan solen och sänder sina signaler på ett avstånd av runt 325 miljoner km.

För mer information.     http://www.arlembke.se/

Då var det dags igen för nya CubeSats. Tisdag 11/2 släpptes följande ut:

LituanicaSAT-1
• FM Transponder Uplink 145.950 MHz Downlink 435.180 MHz
• AX25 Uplink 145.850 MHz AX25 Downlink 437.550 MHz
• CW Beacon 437.275 MHz
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lituanicasat1

LitSat-1
• SSB Transponder Uplink 435.180 MHz Downlink 145.950 MHz
• AX25 Uplink 437.550 MHz Downlink 145.850 MHz
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/palydovas

ArduSat
•  9k6 MSK CCSDS data format downlink 437.? MHz
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575960623/ardusat-your-arduino-experiment-in-space

UAPSAT
• AX.25 Packet Radio uplink 145.980 MHz downlink 437.385 MHz

Vi tackar AMSAT-UK för information. Du kan läsa mera här.

Hej!

Vi lyckades hitta en ledig frekvens idag och körde ett litet nät.

Deltagare
SM0DZL
SM0IFP
SM4EFW
SM4JLX
SM6NZV
SM7FWZ
SM7WSJ

*Det meddelas att det kommer ett ordentligt gäng med nya satelliter inom en
snar framtid.

http://amsat-uk.org/2014/02/01/japanese-amateur-radio-satellite-depoyments/

*Satellit frekvenser
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hamradio/je9pel/satslist.htm

*8,4 GHz
SM7FWZ meddelar att han efter en tids byggande och experimenterande nu har
lyckats höra Stereo B som befinner sig långt ut i rymden.
Avståndet ska ligga runt 325 miljoner km och presterade ändå en signal runt
10 dB över bruset. Ronny har byggt upp en stor parabol med autotracking
samt konstruerat matarhorn och nedkonverter för att fånga det ultimata
DX:et…

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Länk för att se var den befinner sig
http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/where.shtml

Vi försöker att träffas på 3740 KHz även nästa söndag klockan 10.00

mvh Håkan SM7WSJ

Hej!

Vi har varit igång alla söndagar i början av året, men lite svårt att
genomföra stabila kontakter då det varit varierande förhållande samt lite
testaktivitet.

Deltagare
SM0DZL
SM0IFP
SM4EFW
SM5HL
SM6NZV
SM7WSJ

*Rosetta wake up call
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Wake_up_Rosetta

*Cubesat med 2,4 GHz
UKube-1 communications subsystem:Telemetry downlink 145.840 MHz
FUNcube subsystem beacon 145.915 MHz 1200 bps BPSK
400 mW inverting linear transponder for SSB and CW
435.080 -435.060 MHz Uplink
145.930 -145.950 MHz Downlink
2401.0 MHz S Band Downlink
437.425-437.525 MHz UKSEDS myPocketQub Downlink
March launch for UKube-1 and TechDemoSat-1
http://tinyurl.com/ANS019-UKube-1

The UK CubeSat Forum

Announcing: The UK CubeSat Forum

*Angående nya satelliterDet är ett stort antal satelliter på väg upp även i
år och vi försöker hänga med och rapporter i samband med
uppskjutningar.*FUN-Cube AO-73Numera får man med AO-73 i listan när man
uppdaterar telemetrin i sitt spårningsprogram.Det ligger med lite nya Fitter
meddelande för den som lyssnar på satelliten
*ARRL läromedel för att få in rymden i klassrummet

Bringing space into the classroom is an incredibly powerful learning
experience for students. The marriage between wireless technology
literacy and space literacy is a strong one that produces a portfolio
of activities that can engage virtually all students at some ability
and interest level.

The portfolio of activities can range from simply having a satellite
prediction software package running in the back of the classroom on
an old, salvaged computer, a simple receiver to collect telemetry
data from orbiting satellites, to a full-up ground station to
communicate with other hams via satellites, or even with the
astronauts in the International Space Station through the ARISS
(Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) program.

New Resources for Classroom Instruction

For an overview of recent additions of classroom resources designed
to help teachers instruct students about research projects to be
launched by AMSAT on its Fox satellites, view a video of a
presentation by Mark Spencer, WA8SME at the 2013 AMSAT Symposium.

This library is a collection of resources designed for teachers who
want to explore satellite communications with students. There are
also instructional resources designed for classroom exploration of
satellite telemetry data used to understand satellite engineering and
research deployed on satellites. The classroom resources are
manipulatives that can prepare students to understand and utilize
live telemetry data that can be captured from orbiting satellites.
The collection includes

+ Satellite Antenna Rotor Simulator
+ CubeSat Classroom Simulator
+ Study Satellite “Wobble” Using Telemetry Data
+ Managing Satellite Power: A Study in Maximum Power Point Tracking
+ MAREA: Mars Lander Simulation
+ Using FUNCube to do Materials Science in the Classroom
+ Studying Satellite Rotation

In the interest of supporting teachers who want to bring space into
the classroom by actively engaging students with amateur radio
satellite communications, the Education Technology Program has
developed some equipment resources designed with utility to support
ham radio satellite operations for classroom use.

+ Satellite Tracker Interface
+ ISS Minimalist Antenna
+ ISS Minimalist Antenna, UHF Version
+ Inexpensive Broadband Preamp for Satellite Work
+ Inexpensive �WRAPS� Rotor for Satellite Work

For more information visit
http://www.arrl.org/classroom-library-satellite-communications

This information nicely supplements other ARRL Educational
Information.

The ARRL Educational & Technology Program Curriculum Guide
http://www.arrl.org/curriculum-guide

Reports on classroom activities
http://www.arrl.org/reports-on-classroom-activities

Amateur Radio Curriculum Connections
http://www.arrl.org/curriculum-connections-and-benchmarks

and other articles and stories that describe the classroom
activities of students
http://www.arrl.org/articles-and-stories

Vi hörs även nästa söndag på 3740 KHz

73 Håkan SM7WSJ