AMSAT-UK Latest News

Home > News > Latest_News > Current Page

AMSAT UK MONTHLY SATELLITE REPORT: July 2006

As compiled by PAUL 2E1EUB. Inclusions to be included in this monthly report to reach me by the 25th of each month please, at: 2E1EUB@AMSAT.ORG.� This report can also be found at www.amsatuk.org and on packet Radio or may be heard live on 3.780mhz +/- QRM� on the last Sunday of each month around 10.00 local time. The net takes place every Sunday.

VO52/HAMSAT

AMSAT India has applied for and has been granted an OSCAR number for HAMSAT. In the future HAMSAT will be referred to as VUSat-OSCAR 52 or VO-52 for short.

For additional information about HamSat please see:
<http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/sat_summary/hamsat.php>

This bird has heavy traffic! and plenty of new comers, lets hope it stands the pace, Ive already noticed weaker signals than first noted. The foot print is not massive and it moves quick ,but its possible to work the USA just about.

HAMSAT frequencies: ------------------- Indian transponder: Uplink : 435.225MHz to 435.275MHz LSB/CW Downlink: 145.875MHz to 145.925MHz USB/CW Beacon : 145.940MHz continue carrier signal Dutch transponder: Uplink : 435.225MHz to 435.275MHz LSB/CW Downlink: 145.875MHz to 145.925MHz USB/CW Beacon : 145.860MHz 12WPM with CW message

AO-51 ECHO

Status: operational//

check out the new mode on tx/a this month! Reports welcome from stations using the digital side of ao51. Some improvements have been made after studying the latest data! PLEASE NOTE: The bbs call sign has now been changed to: PECHO-12 and the broadcast call is :PECHO-11�
Echo Operating Schedule for:
July 2006 AO-51 (AMSAT Echo) Schedule

Revised on July 10 to include L band modes on TXa

July 1 to July 13

FM Repeater
Downlink 435.300 MHz FM
Uplink 145.920 MHz FM with 67 Hz Tone

Digital / PBBS
Downlink 435.150 MHz FM 9k6 Digital
Uplink 145.860 MHz FM 9k6 Digital
PBBS Active
Telemetry Downlink and Digipeater Active (No Unattended Digipeater Ops Please)

July 13 to July 17

FM Repeater
Downlink 435.300 MHz FM
Uplink 145.920 MHz FM with 67 Hz Tone

Digital / PBBS
Downlink: 435.150 MHz FM, 9k6 PBP Digital
Uplink: 1268.700 MHz FM, 9k6 PBP Digital
PBBS Active
Telemetry Downlink and Digipeater Active (No Unattended Digipeater Ops Please)

July 17 to July 24

FM Repeater
Downlink 435.300 MHz FM
Uplink 145.920 MHz FM with 67 Hz Tone

FM Repeater
Downlink 435.150 MHz FM
Uplink 1268.700 MHz FM

July 24 to July 31

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS) - ARISS

Status: Operational

Current Mode: Packet

Digipeater: Active

Russian callsigns RS0ISS, RZ3DZR

USA callsign NA1SS

Packet station mailbox callsign RS0ISS-11

Packet station keyboard callsign RS0ISS-3

ARISS Status Report

ARISS Status July 3, 2006

1. ARISS-Kuwait Contact Successful

The first ARISS contact with children in Kuwait took place on Wednesday, June 28. Eleven students at the Kuwait Scientific Center in
Salmiyah spoke to Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ, via the telebridge station WH6PN in Hawaii. Twenty-two questions were asked as an audience
of approximately forty people gathered to witness the contact. The event received extensive media coverage which included the
following: Al-Hadaf, Al-Yaqaza and Al-Nahdha (Weekly Arabic magazines), The Daily Star (Daily Arabic Magazine), Al-Qabas and Al-Rai
Al-Am (Local daily newspapers), Arab Times and Kuwait Times (local daily English newspapers), Layalina (Arabic bi-monthly magazine),
Kuwait National Television for an evening program, Kuwait National TV Children�s Program, KUNA (Kuwait News Agency) and Kuwait
Science Club Media. To view KUNA�s news coverage on the event, see:
<http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=881386> English version no pictures.
<http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=ar&DSNO=881359> Arabic version with pictures.

The audio from this contact was fed into the EchoLink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers and received 15 connections, of
which 2 were repeaters, from 7 countries. IRLP Discovery Reflector 9010 had 3 connections from Canada. The audio was also webcast by
Verizon Conferencing and through the Scientific Center Kuwait.

2. Upcoming School Contact

The Hiroshima Children�s Museum in Hiroshima, Japan has been approved for a radio contact with astronaut Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ.
The event is planned for Tuesday, July 4 at 11:54 UTC.

3. ARRL Article on ARISS ESC Camp Contact

The ARRL article, �European Space Campers Quiz Astronaut on Space Life, Research,� covers the recent Belgium contact and may be
found at: <http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/06/27/1/?nc=1>

4. ARISS International Team Meeting Held

The monthly ARISS International Team meeting was held on June 27. Topics of discussion included the ARISS International face to face
meeting to be held in San Francisco in October, school contacts with ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, DF4TR, and the work toward an
amateur radio license for Japanese space visitor, Dice-K Enomoto, scheduled to fly this fall. Minutes will be posted to the ARISS website
in the near future.

5. Educator Astronaut Participates in Kids Day

On June 30, ARRL ran a story on Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, KE5DAT, who participated in Kids Day on June 17. Kids Day is an ARRL
activity which is held to pique children�s interest in amateur radio. �Educator astronaut gets on the air for Kids Day� may be found at:
<http://www.arrl.org/>

6. AMSAT and ARISS-International Meetings, October 2006

The AMSAT-NA Annual Meeting and Space Symposium and the ARISS International Meeting will be held October 5 - 10, 2006 in San
Francisco. Online registration in now available. See:
<http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/symposium/>

Now STS-121 Mission has launched there are three radio amateurs aboard. These three Discovery crew radio amateurs will join with the two hams already aboard the ISS for a total of five radio amateurs in space. The radio amateurs aboard Discover are Mission Specialists Lisa Nowak, KC5ZTB, Stephanie Wilson, KD5DZE, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and Mission Specialist Thomas Reiter, DF4TR.

Reiter will remain on the ISS as part of the Expedition 13 and 14 crews joining with Expedition 13 Commander and cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, RV3BS, and Flight Engineer and NASA Station Science Officer Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ.

The Discovery Shuttle carries no Amateur Radio equipment on this mission.

International Space Station Status Report: SS06-031

The Expedition 13 crew welcomed a Russian resupply ship this week and prepared for the arrival of Space Shuttle Discovery.

Discovery�s launch is scheduled for 3:49 p.m. EDT Saturday. Discovery's STS-121 mission will return the station to three crew members for the first time since 2003, when European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter joins crew members Jeff Williams, flight engineer and Pavel Vinogradov, commander.

To get ready for STS-121 spacewalks, the crew flushed cooling loops in the Quest airlock and U.S. spacesuits, configured airlock systems and tools and reviewed robotic arm procedures. They checked out a ship-to-ship communications system that will be used for conversations with Discovery's crew during rendezvous and disconnected the station�s Common Cabin Air Assembly heat exchanger. That device will be returned to Earth aboard Discovery along with other equipment in the Italian-built Leonardo Multipurpose Logistics Module. Discovery will use Leonardo to bring about 5,000 pounds of supplies to the station.

The crew also completed a mid-mission session of the renal stone experiment by collecting urine samples and logging all of the food and drinks consumed over a three-day period. Each crewmember is taking either potassium citrate, a drug found to be useful in preventing kidney stone formation on Earth, or a placebo. Crews in space are at risk for kidney stones because of their loss of bone density.

ISS Progress 22, the unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft, brought 2.5 tons of fresh produce, other foodstuffs, food, fuel and supplies to the station on June 26. After the cargo ship was fully connected with station systems, flight controllers in Moscow completed a routine thruster test, and Vinogradov removed its Kurs automated rendezvous hardware.

The Mission Control Center told the STS-121 crew this morning that engineers have cleared Space Shuttle Discovery for landing after completing a review of post-docking inspection data.

The crew members received the word while eating lunch. They are preparing today for landing by stowing items, testing engines and checking out shuttle systems.

The astronauts took a break from their work to talk to reporters with CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and the Fox News Channel at 12:03 p.m. EDT.

Landing is set for 9:14 a.m. EDT Monday at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The crew is scheduled to fire the shuttle�s engines at 8:07 a.m. to begin Discovery�s descent to Florida.

A second landing opportunity in Florida also is available for Monday. The crew would fire the engines at 9:43 a.m. for a landing at 10:50 a.m. Weather forecasts call for a chance of showers at the landing site. Flight controllers do not plan to consider any landing site other than Florida on Monday.

Discovery delivered supplies, equipment and a new Expedition 13 crew member to the International Space Station. During three spacewalks, the crew performed maintenance on the station�s mobile transporter and tested orbiter heat shield repair techniques.

STS-121 Landing information
+ View the landing groundtracks </mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts121/mission_docs/landing.html>

AO-7 AMSAT OSCAR 7

Status: Semi-operational in sunlight.

Return to active status: June 21,2002

Emily, W0EEC has created a website to allow the users of AO-7 to record

contacts, observations and use of the satellite more effectively at:

http://www.emilyshouse.com/experthams/ao7/main.php

This includes the ability to log contacts.

Mostly in mode B, ! with dx stations heard regularly, with some qrm on the 2m down link. But still plenty of traffic, showing that the old mode b transponder is� much liked and rated. Tending to disappear or change modes part way through passes, perhaps due to poor solar lock.?

ao7 seems weaker than normal, the last few months.

AO-27 AMRAD�� *******

Status:semi Operational( On!)

Evening time uk/europe,FM repeater on first part off each pass.

The latest information on AO-27� can be found at:

http://www.ao27.org

still in eclipse! not much doing at moment.

FO-29 JAS-2

Status: Operational

working well, with strong downlink signals at times.

Voice/CW Mode JA

plenty of state side stations to be found last pass over the UK in the evening....

SO-50 SAUDISAT-1C

Status: Operational.

Uplink: 145.850 MHz

There have been unconfirmed reports on the amsat-bb emailer that So-50 has

shifted downlink frequency as much as 5khz up.

To switch the transmitter on, you need to send a CTCSS tone of 74.4 Hz. and then ctcss of 67hz to keep the bird open:

UO-11 OSCAR-11�semi operational

RECEPTION REPORTS REQUESTED! Due to solar eclipses (see below) the VHF beacon on 145.826 MHz. may only transmit for a short times, perhaps for only a few orbits, or even less, at irregular intervals. Any reception reports would be appreciated. Please e-mail xxxxx@amsat.org (replace xxxxx by g3cwv), or post to AMSAT-BB. If you are unfamiliar with the sound of OSCAR-11, there is an audio clip on my website www.users.zetnet.co.uk/clivew/ During the period 06 May to 15 June 2006 nothing has been heard from the satellite. OSCAR-11's VHF beacon switched OFF on 05 May, as expected. This was just one day before the solar eclipses were due to start. These eclipses will continue until 04 August 2006, reaching a maximum duration of 22% around 19 June. If the satellite behaves in the same way as it did last year, the beacon may only be heard for very short times, during the eclipse season. Unfortunately, due to holidays, I was unable to monitor the satellite around 15 May, when the first transmissions during the eclipse season were expected. However, I am indebted to Jeff KB2M, Bob G4VRC and Gustavo LW2DTZ who listened for the satellite while I was away. The current status of the satellite is that all the analogue telemetry channels, 0 to 59 are zero, ie they have failed. The status channels 60 to 67 are still working. The spacecraft computer and active attitude control system have switched OFF, ie. the satellite' attitude is controlled only by the passive gravity boom gradient, and the satellite is free to spin at any speed. When telemetry was last received it showed that one of the solar arrays had failed, and there was a large unexplained current drain on the main 14 volt bus. After 22 years in orbit the battery has undergone around 100,000 partial charge/discharge cycles, and observations suggest that it cannot power the satellite during eclipses, or sometimes during periods of poor solar attitude. When last heard, the on-board clock showed a very large accumulated error. On 05 May it was 22.76456 days slow. The clock lost two hours during the last OFF period, and nine hours during the last transmission period. The observations of clock errors suggest that the clock may slow or stop when the battery voltage is low. The watchdog timer now operates on a 20 day cycle. During the three months before the eclipses started, the ON/OFF times have been very consistent, and the average of many observations show this to be 20.7 days, ie. 10.3 days ON followed by 10.4 days OFF. However, during the present solar eclipse season, power supply problems, may result in a low 14 volt line supply, which may cause the beacon to switch OFF prematurely, and reset the watchdog timer cycle. The Beacon frequencies are - VHF 145.826 MHz. AFSK FM ASCII Telemetry UHF 435.025 MHz. OFF S-band 2401.5 MHz. OFF Listeners to OSCAR-11 may be interested in visiting my website which contains an archive of news & telemetry data. It also contains details about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture. There is software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry. The URL is www.users.zetnet.co.uk/clivew/

AO-16 PACSat

Status: Semi-operational, the digipeater command is on and open for

APRS user

Broadcast Callsign: PACSAT-11

BBS: PACSAT-12

GO-32 TECHSAT-1B

Status: Operational

Roni, 4Z7DFC, reports:

�Techsat1b BBS's is back ..but still having problems...

Uplink freq. ; 145.859, 145.890, 1269.800

More information of GO-32 can be found at:

http://www.iarc.org/techsat/techsat.html

NO-44 PCSAT 1

Status: Operational-in sunlight

PCSat is a 1200-baud APRS digipeater

http://pcsat.aprs.org

The APRS-equipped PCSat was built by midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy

PCSAT2

UI Digipeater 145.825 MHz FM 1200 Baud AFSK TLM and PSK Downlink 435.275 MHz FM 1200 AFSK or PSK-31 PSK-31 Uplink 29.4 MHz PSK-31 Aux Downlink 437.975 MHz FM 1200 and 9600 Baud AFSK Voice Repeater Downlink 437.975MHz FM Deployed 3 August 2005

Thirteen CubeSats to be Launched on July 26

Thirteen Amateur Radio Satellites will be launched on July 26, 2006 on a DNEPR-1LV rocket from the Kazakstan Baikonur Cosmodrome in what will be the largest ever deployment of Amateur Radio Satellites. A fourteenth satellite will operate on commercial frequencies.

The satellites will be put into a 500 by 566 km orbit with an inclination of 97 degrees. Each satellite is a 10cm cube weighing just 1kg into which is packed the battery, transmitter and the various experiments.

Further information on the Dnepr Launch 1 can be seen at: http://littonlab.atl.calpoly.edu/ <http://littonlab.atl.calpoly.edu/>

Ralph, W�RPK, maintains a web page with up-to-date CubeSat status at: http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/CubeSat.htm <http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/CubeSat.htm>

The July 26 CubeSat launch manifest, summarized below, is from Ralph's web page. Please refer to each of the satellite team's web pages for detailed information.

Cubesat Frequency Summary for July 26 Launch

Satellite Downlink Beacon Mode Callsign
---------------------------------------------------------------
SACRED 436.870 1200 baud AFSK WA4CEW
ION 437.505 437.505 1200 baud AFSK ---
RINCON 436.870 437.345 1200 baud AFSK WA4CEW
ICEcube1 437.305 9600 baud FSK W2CXM
KUTESat Pathfinder 437.385 1200 baud AFSK KC0RMW
nCUBE-1 437.305 9600 baud GMSK LA1CUB
HAUSAT-1 437.465 437.465 1200 baud AFSK D90HP
SEEDS 437.485 1200 baud AFSK JQ1YGU
PolySat CP2 437.325 437.325 1200 baud AFSK ---
AeroCube1 902/928 9600 baud GFSK ---
MEROPE 145.980 1200 baud AFSK K7MSU-1
Mea Huaka'i Voyager 437.405/5.840GHz 1200 baud AFSK ---
ICEcube2 437.425 9600 baud FSK N2VR
PolySat CP1 436.845 15 baud DTMF,CW

Close miss!

An old U.S. Air Force spy satellite named Hitch Hiker 1 passed close but harmlessly by the International Space Station, a top ballistics expert with Russia's mission control centre told the RIA Novosti news service June 27.

Hitch Hiker 1, launched aboard a Thor-Agena D rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on June 27, 1963, closed within 1,000 feet of the space station at a combined speed of more than 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers) an hour.

Hitch Hiker, whose mission remains classified, was thought to be designed to detect Soviet Union nuclear weapons tests from its polar orbit.

"Our calculations have been correct - the object flew past the station," Nikolai Ivanov told the news service, adding the ISS crew had not been instructed to try to photograph Hitch Hiker, because it was moving at such a high speed.

"The speed was more than 14 kilometers (9 miles) per second, and it was impossible to record it," Ivanov said. He noted that the U.S. Space Catalog contains more than 10,000 various objects of different sizes currently in orbit around Earth - including the space station.

"Only 10 percent of these objects, each of which has a number, are operable spacecraft, and the rest are just space garbage," Ivanov said.

He added, however, that if mission controllers' calculations had been incorrect, the satellite could have pierced or several damaged the station. He said Russian and NASA systems had been monitoring the encounter.

"The ISS had a special procedure, developed in advance, for emergency maneuvers to swerve away from space garbage," Ivanov said. "The ISS has used six such maneuvers in its history - four with the help of Progress spacecraft and two using shuttles."

Please QSL!

International Space Station Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur, KC5ACR, reports logging 130 DXCC entities from NA1SS while on orbit, but the DX QSLs have been slow in coming. To date McArthur has only about one-third of the entities confirmed for a special DXCC from
space.

DX stations that worked McArthur at NA1SS during Expedition 12 are urged to send QSL cards to:

ARRL
ARISS QSL -- Exp 12
225 Main St.
Newington, CT 06111-1494 USA

DX stations may also QSL via the routes on the Amateur Radio on the
International Space Station (ARISS) Web site:
http://www.rac.ca/ariss/oindex.htm#QSL's <http://www.rac.ca/ariss/oindex.htm>

They will take longer to be counted. If you've already sent a card "via the buro," ARISS asks that you send another to the ARRL ARISS QSL address.

As of June 20, McArthur has these entities confirmed from NA1SS:
Alaska, Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, England, France, Gibraltar, Hawaii, India, Israel, Japan, Mariana Is, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Panama, Puerto Rico, South Cook Is, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela.

�PAUL . 2E1EUB. (AMSAT UK 6236)