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Ham Satellite news Members news

Ballonger och amatörradio

Följande skriver AMSAT-SM ordförande Håkan SM7WSJ:

Hej!

Vi diskuterade lite ballong experiment på årsmötet.

Man ser mer och mer trevliga experiment i vår omvärld och man märker i
samtal med andra amatörer att det vore lätt att få in kapital och resurser
till att köra liknande experiment i SM.

Jag själv hörde min första ballong i veckan som gick. Den aktuella ballongen
släpptes i UK för att färdas förbi i södra Sverige och vidare österut.

Sändareffekt 10 mW och höjden 8000 meter hördes dom 15 mil bort den befann
sig när jag lyssnade.

SM0IKR rapporterade lite på årsmötet om experiment i sin klubb

http://www.sra.se/index.php/projekt/becat/140-sra-becat-ballon-experiment-carrying-amateur-radio.html

Det finns en hel rad med intressanta experiment som skulle kunna göras med
hjälp av APRS, reverse beacon, transpondrar, mm mm….

Om man börjar att titta på tillståndsbiten och dom regler som finns runt det
här i sverige så tvekar man lite?. Jag personligen ser det som uteslutet
att flyga Svart, utan allt måste vara helt “by the book´´ så att man kan
publicera resultat på olika websidor.

https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/Luftfart/Flygplatser-och-flygtrafiktjanst/Flygtrafiktjanst/Ballonger/

Under tiden kan vi följa dom experiment som pågår i EU

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ukhas

http://leobodnar.com/balloons/

http://spacenear.us/tracker/

Vi funderar vidare! 73 Håkan SM7WSJ

Categories
Ham Satellite news

$50Sat heter nu OSCAR-76

Då har vi fått ännu en satellit som får kalla sig för “OSCAR”.

50sat

The following was received from Bill Tynan, W3XO, AMSAT’s OSCAR Number
Administrator.

Congratulations to the entire $50Sat team for your successful launch and
operation of this Amateur Radio satellite. $50Sat meets all of the conditions
needed to receive an OSCAR number. In your e-mail yesterday, you agreed to my
suggestion that, since the satellite was constructed at Morehead State
University in Kentucky, that Morehead OSCAR would be an appropriate name, I
therefore by the authority vested in me by the President of AMSAT-NA, am pleased
to confer on $50Sat the designation Morehead OSCAR-76 or the abbreviation,
MO-76.

Speaking for AMSAT-NA, I wish Morehead OSCAR a long and successful life in space
and hope that all of its mission goals will be met.

73,

William (Bill) Tynan, W3XO
AMSAT OSCAR Number Administrator

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Oscar 11 30-årsjubileum

UO-11
UO-11

 

I år är det 30 år sedan satelliten UoSAT-2 (OSCAR 11) kom upp grattis! Läs mer:

UoSAT-2 was launched on March 1st, 1984, from  Vandenberg Air Force
Base in the USA and carried some novel payloads, including a
“Digitalker”.

Today, UoSAT-2 still transmits its VHF telemetry on a regular 11-day
cycle, although the satellite’s batteries are exhausted after some
160,000 charge cycles and transmissions are now detectable only when
it is in sunlight.  However, the telemetry continues to be tracked by
amateur radio satellite enthusiasts worldwide, using the predictable
transmissions to help calibrate their equipment.

Following the successful first microsatellite launch of UoSAT-1 from
the Surrey team in 1981, NASA again offered a second launch
opportunity—but with only 6 months warning! Rising to the challenge
and literally working day-and-night, the Surrey team comprising about
a dozen researchers and AMSAT members designed and built the 70kg
UoSAT-2 microsatellite just in time for the launch as a ‘piggyback’
passenger with NASA’s LANDSAT-5. Incorporating many of the lessons
learned from their first satellite, UoSAT-2 carried some novel
experiments – a “Digitalker” speech synthesizer, specifically
designed for school demonstrations of satellite telemetry and orbital
physics, alongside experiments including magnetometers, an early CCD
camera, a Geiger tube and a sensitive microphone to detect micro-
meteoroid impacts.

In the days before GPS, UoSAT-2 provided a novel communication
system for the 1988 Canadian-Soviet Ski-trek arctic expedition, a
group of intrepid explorers from Canada and the USSR who crossed the
Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Ward Hunt Island, just off Canada, via
the North Pole between March and June 1988. The position of the
skiers’ emergency beacon was calculated daily by US and Soviet COSPAS-
SARSAT ground stations, relayed to the Surrey Mission Control
Groundstation by telex, and uploaded to the UoSAT-2 Digitalker which
then ‘spoke’ the latitude and longitude of the ski party via its VHF
beacon. In a sun-synchronous, 650km low Earth orbit, UoSAT-2 flew
over the pole every 98 minutes at which point the group could receive
the broadcast from the satellite using their small handheld VHF
radios that were designed to work at very low temperatures. The
Digitalker communications system could also serve as an emergency
channel in the event that all other radio links failed. Thousands of
amateur radio listeners and schoolchildren also monitored the spoken
messages from the Digitalker and plotted the path of the expedition –
many using the then state-of-the-art BBC microcomputer! There’s more
about the Ski-trek expedition, and a recording of the Digitalker, on
the expedition home page at

http://www.meerman.fsnet.co.uk/NorthPole/textpan.html

UoSAT-2 was one of the first satellites to prove that commercial
grade microprocessors and memory chips, which had only just become
readily available, mass produced and cheaper in the early 80s as part
of the microcomputer revolution, could be used to build small, cost-
effective yet capable satellites. The idea of taking advantage of
commercially available technology and adapting it for space, instead
of using expensive ‘space-grade’ components, was virtually unheard of
at the time, but SSTL proved the concept was viable and has gone on
to build a highly successful business.

Today, UoSAT-2 is the longest-serving of 13 satellites that SSTL and
the Surrey Space Centre track from ground stations in Guildford, UK.

SSTL and the Surrey Space Centre have come very long way from those
early days of the 1980s!

The SSTL infosite may be accessed at

http://www.sstl.co.uk/

[ANS thanks SatNews Daily and AMSAT-UK for the above information]

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Geostationär amatörtransponder

Det händer hela tiden nya intressanta saker inom satellithobbyn och nu kommer informationen att vi är på god väg att få vår första geosatellit transponder.

Om den här förverkligas fullt ut så kommer vi i Sverige kunna nå den då jag i södra SM har den i riktning 165 grader AZ samt 24 grader EL.

26 EAST

Jag har gjort en liten simulering vad positionen 26 grader öst betyder och bifogar även det brev som Peter DB2OS i Amsat DL har skrivit.
Es’HailSat-2 will carry two geostationary ?Phase 4? amateur radio transponders !!

As a result of a concept proposed by the Qatar Amateur Radio Society,
Es? Hailsat, the Qatar Satellite Company, have announced that their new,
geostationary, Es’HailSat-2 Communications will provide transponders for use by radio amateurs. The spacecraft is expected to be ready for launch by the end of 2016.
Es’HailSat-2 will provide a 250kHz linear transponder intended for conventional analogue operations in addition to Another transponder which will have an 8MHz bandwidth. The latter transponder is intended for experimental digital modulation schemes and DVB amateur television.

Precise uplink and downlink frequencies remain to befinalized but the uplinks will be in the 2.40-2.45GHz and the downlinks in the 10.450-10.500GHz amateur satellite service allocations.  Both transponders will have broad beam antennas to provide full coverageover about 1/3rd of the earth?s surface. Precise operational plans will be finalised over the coming months but it is anticipated that only quite simple ground equipment will be required to use this satellite.

A team of amateurs, led by Peter Guelzow DB2OS (President of AMSAT-DL)
are providing technical support to this ground breaking project which is expected to
provide an exciting new phase of activity for radio amateurs for the 21st century.

 

Det händer hela tiden något intressant även i våra dagar då man ofta tror att man sett allt.

73  Håkan SM7WSJ

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Ballonger på 70cm

Vi har precis nu en ballong som passerar nere i Skåne på väg österut.

Den sänder telemetri på frekvensen 434,500. Ballongen har under dagen sänts upp i England för att nu befinna sig på drygt 8000 meters höjd.

Det ska eventuellt komma en till på lördag kväll.

 

Ballong

På den här sidan kan man se ballongernas färd   http://spacenear.us/tracker/fullscreen.php

Categories
Ham Satellite news

AMSAT-SM HF-nätet 9/3 2014

Hej!

Vi körde ett litet nät idag på 3740 KHz klockan 10.00

*HAM TV igång på Rymdstationen.

ISS HamTV Success (3-8-2014)

On Saturday, March 8 test transmissions were made on 2422.0 MHz
using the HamTV equipment on the International Space Station (ISS).

The Digital TV signal was successfully received and web streamed to
a global audience via the Britsh Amateur Television Club (BATC)
server at http://batc.tv/ch_live.php?ch=4 There were four live web
streams each from different receivers.

The HamTV transmitter is the culmination of over ten years work by
dedicated volunteers to establish an amateur radio TV transmitter on
the ISS. It uses patch antennas fixed on the Meteorite Debris Panels
(MDP) protecting the hull of the ISS Columbus module. These antennas
were installed while the Columbus module was being constructed. A
fund-raising campaign took place during 2005-7 to raise over 65,000
Euros for the antennas. Individual radio amateurs from around the
world donated generously as did several organisations including AMSAT-
UK and the RSGB.

The main mission of HamTV is to perform contacts between the
astronauts on the ISS and school students, not only by voice as now,
but also by unidirectional video from the ISS to the ground.

HamVideo is the name of the onboard DATV S-band transmitter. HamTV
is the name of the complete system, comprising DATV downlink and VHF
voice uplink. Kaiser Italia SRL was the prime-contractor for the
design and development of the flight and ground segment
http://www.kayser.it/index.php/exploration-2/ham-tv

Read the HamTV overview by Gaston Bertels ON4WF
http://tinyurl.com/HamTVoverview

Join the ISS HamTV Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HamTV

Webstream of the TV transmissions
http://batc.tv/ch_live.php?ch=4

ARISS-EU HamTV Bulletins
http://www.ariss-eu.org/

HamTV on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/Hamtvproject

ISS Ham Video now installed and ready for commissioning (3-6-2014)

The Ham Video transmitter was installed in the Columbus module of
the International Space Station (ISS) on March 6, 2014 at
approximately 10.00 UT.

The transmitter was powered on briefly and all control LEDs were
nominal. Ham Video is declared ready for Commissioning.
The first Commissioning step is planned March 8, 2014. Using call
sign OR4ISS, crew will power on the Ham Video transmitter in
configuration 1:

– ARISS antenna 41
– Frequency 2.422 GHz
– Symbol rate 1.3 Ms/s

The transmission will start shortly before the pass of the ISS over
Western Europe at approximately 13.27 UT.

Acquisition of signal (AOS) at Matera ground station in south Italy
will be at approximately 13.29 UT.

Matera will receive the Ham Video signals with 3 different
receivers. The output of each receiver will be web streamed over BATC
channels ISS1, ISS2 and ISS3.

The ARISS ground station IK1SLD, located in Northern Italy, will
also receive the Ham Video signals and stream the video over BATC
channel ISS4.

*AO-73 Funcube

FUNcube-1 (AO-73) 100+ days in orbit

Last weekend FUNcube-1 (AO-73) reached the milestone of having been
in space for 100 days ? actually that should be clarified to mean
?terrestrial? days as the spacecraft itself has been subjected to
more than 1500 day/night cycles during this time.

We are very grateful to the 500+ stations who have been providing
FUNcube-1 telemetry data to our Data Warehouse. We now have more than
1GB of data in the repository ? this is an amazing effort and
achievement from a spacecraft which is only transmitting at 1200bps.
Thanks everyone and please keep it coming:)

From all the telemetry we can see that the spin rate decreased for a
time but now is speeding up again. External temperatures span a range
of 50C between the end of the sunlit phase and the end of the eclipse
period. Even inside the spacecraft the temperatures range over 25C.

All the subsystems continue to work well and are ?well in the green?.

The increased solar activity is certainly having an effect on the
downlinked signal on many occasions. During such disturbances the
signal appears to be being affected by ionospheric scintillation
which distorts the BPSK stream and makes decoding much harder for
some minutes at a time. This effect is not just apparent near the
magnetic poles as can be seen in this paper:
http://waas.stanford.edu/papers/IWG/sbas_iono_scintillations_white_pap
er.pdf

Users in the Northern hemisphere will have noticed that the evening
passes in amateur mode are becoming shorter as the spacecraft enters
sunlight again near the pole. This effect will increase as the season
progresses and we will be testing a plan to change the operating
schedule in a few weeks time. This test will involve placing the
spacecraft into continuous amateur/transponder mode for a number of
orbits ? probably over a weekend.

Especially for educational users of FUNcube, we have placed all our
schools outreach material on one page for easy reference. It can now
all be found here:
http://funcube.org.uk/education-outreach/

*Massutsläpp av satelliter
The largest ever launch of 437 MHz satellites is planned for March
16 at 0841 UT when 128 Sprite satellites will fly on the SpaceX
Falcon 9 CRS 3 mission to be deployed into a 325?315 km 51.5 degree
inclination orbit. You should be able to watch the launch live on
NASA TV.

The project was originally conceived by AMSAT-UK member Michael
Johnson M0MJJ at Cornell University. Michael was the first project
manager who specified many aspects of the project, making it
technically and financially viable. He left the project in 2012 to
found PocketSpacecraft.com.

A Sprite is a tiny, 3.5 by 3.5 cm, single-board spacecraft that was
developed by Zac Manchester KD2BHC.

Each Sprite has a microcontroller, radio, and solar cells and is
capable of carrying single-chip sensors, such as thermometers,
magnetometers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers.

The 128 Sprites are carried in a 3U CubeSat called KickSat. They are
stacked atop a spring-loaded pusher and secured by a nichrome burn
wire system.

On reaching orbit KickSat will perform a de-tumble maneuver and
establish communication with Cornell University?s ground station.
After check-out, the spacecraft will be put in a sun-pointing
attitude and spun up to maintain that attitude.

A command signal from the ground station will then trigger the
deployment and the Sprites will be released as free-flying
spacecraft. After deployment, telemetry and sensor measurements from
the individual Sprites will be received through Cornell?s ground
station in Ithaca, NY, as well as several other amateur ground
stations around the world.

Due to the low orbit Sprites will have a short lifetime before they
reenter the atmosphere and burn up. In the best-case scenario the
orbital lifetime could be six weeks but realistically it may be
considerably shorter depending on atmospheric conditions, maybe a
matter of days.

All the Sprites operate on a single frequency of 437.240 MHz and use
Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). The transmitter runs 10 mW
output of Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) modulated binary data with each
data bit modulated as a 511 bit Pseudo-Random Number (PRN) sequence.
The ITU emission designator is 50K0G1D.

The KickSat CubeSat has downlinks on 437.505 MHz and 2401-2436.2 MHz.

KickSat Sprite Ground Station by Andy Thomas G0SFJ
http://kicksat.wordpress.com/support/kicksat-ground-station/

British Interplanetary Society: Sprite Technical Summary
http://www.bis-space.com/2013/03/09/9301/kicksat-technical-summary

KickSat project information
http://zacinaction.github.io/kicksat/

BBC Worldwide TV interview with Zak Manchester KD2BHC. Unfortunately
this is censored in the UK only overseas viewers can see it. A proxy
server may be a way around it.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140128-the-smallest-spacecraft-in-
orbit

Check this site for the latest CRS 3 launch date
http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/

Pocket Spacecraft
http://www.pocketspacecraft.com/

*Årsmöte

Som Lars tidigare informerat så kör vi årsmöte på onsdag.

73 Håkan SM7WSJ