Yaesu handheld and $50SAT 1.5U PocketQube

The $50sat PocketQube satellite team, AB2S, KD8QBA and GW7HPW, are celebrating 90 days in orbit by proposing a technical challenge to all interested radio amateurs.

$50sat is capable of responding to uplink command packets. There are three open packets:

• Test packet – $50SAT responds by sending the RSSI of the received packet in slow FM Morse.

• Request data packet – the normal data packet is sent.

• Request RTTY – The RTTY is sent.

In addition all received packets result in two copies of the ack packet being sent, that contains the RSSI of the received packet.

All the required information to accomplish this is available on the Dropbox location available through the $50sat web page. See the document $50SAT – Eagle2 – Communications – Release Version V1_1.pdf

Anyone that can demonstrate a successful command uplink by submitting a recording of the response packet along with the date, time and location of of the contact will receive a Certificate of Technical Accomplishment signed by all three builders of $50sat.  Submissions can be made to the $50sat email address; 50dollarsat at yahoo.com

This is a significant challenge because there is no magic black box that you can buy to do this.

$50SAT Boards

After 90 days of operation, the Kodak KLIC-7002 camera battery that powers the satellite has fallen off about 100mV, but operations still seem normal.

We have also programmed a special 5th Morse beacon to thank our launch sponsor and mentor Prof. Bob Twiggs. Please give a listen for  the message TNX KE6QMD on the FM Morse beacon.

QSL cards are still available to anyone that posts telemetry, either hand copied CW or RTTY captures, to the 50dollarsat yahoo group.

73 and good luck to all from the $50sat team

$50SAT is one of the smallest amateur radio satellites ever launched at 5x5x7.5 cm and weighs only 210 grams. Transmitter power is just 100 mW on 437.505 MHz (+/-9 kHz Doppler shift) FM CW/RTTY. It uses the low cost Hope RFM22B single chip radio and PICaxe 40X2 processor.

$50SAT has been a collaborative education project between Professor Bob Twiggs, KE6QMD, Morehead State University and three other radio amateurs, Howie DeFelice, AB2S, Michael Kirkhart, KD8QBA, and Stuart Robinson, GW7HPW.

Further information in the $50SAT Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l3919wtfiywk2gf/-HxyXNsIr8

$50SAT – Eagle2 – Communications – Release Version V1_1.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/50DollarSatCommunicationsV1-1

Hope RFM22B single chip radio http://www.hoperf.com/rf/fsk_module/RFM22B.htm

There is a discussion group for $50SAT http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/50dollarsat/

50DollarSat http://www.50dollarsat.info/