AMSAT-UK has announced a new FUNcube Forum to cater for the two FUNcube payloads that will be launched in the coming months.
FUNcube-1 is a complete educational single CubeSat project with the goal of enthusing and educating young people about radio, space, physics and electronics. It is planned to launch on a Dnepr from Dombarovsky near Yasny on November 21, 2013.
FUNcube-2 on UKube-1 comprises of a set of FUNcube boards that will fly as part of the UK Space Agency’s 3 Unit CubeSat UKube-1. It has identical goals and is expected to be launched on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in February 2014.
FUNcube-1 flight model – Image credit Wouter Weggelaar PA3WEG
The latest news about the launch date and time has just been confirmed by Kosmotras.
The launch date of RS-20B rocket (Dnepr) with a group of satellites (DubaiSat-2 cluster mission) from Dombarovsky missile area (Yasny Launch Base) has been established for November 21, 2013 at 07:10:11 UT. The back-up launch date is November 22, 2013 at 07:10:11 UT.
We will shortly be providing prelaunch TLEs and, in about 7/10 days, the Dashboard software that is needed to demodulate and display the telemetry information. More information about the Dashboard can found here http://funcube.org.uk/working-documents/
FUNcube-1 flight model – Image credit Wouter Weggelaar PA3WEG
The PowerPoint slides used in the FUNcube-1 presentation given by Dave Johnson G4DPZ at the RSGB Convention in October 2013 have now been made available.
It is hoped they will be used by others to support presentations they may give on FUNcube-1 to local clubs.
Dave G4DPZ recently announced he was willing to give talks to clubs in his area and a number of clubs immediately took him up on the offer. It is believed there are many other clubs across the country that would welcome a talk on the new FUNcube-1 satellite and AMSAT-UK would like to hear from anyone willing to give such talks.
In this video radio amateur Graham Shirville G3VZV talks about the International Space Station (ISS) HamTV project. The presentation was given to the BATC Convention on October 26, 2013.
Watch ISS Ham TV
Noel Matthews G8GTZ, Chair of the BATC, has announced the first 11 presentation videos from the CAT13 convention on ATV/DATV, held October 26, 2013, have been put up on the BATC video archive area.
They can be found in the http://batc.tv/ Film Archive by selecting the BATC CAT13 category.
Nuttaporn Kaewkajay E22ICQ has posted a video that shows the problem of interference in the Amateur-Satellite allocations in Thailand.
Terrestrial usage of frequencies reserved for the Amateur-Satellite Service such as 145.800-146.000 MHz can result in the satellite transponders being blocked and rendered useless.
The problem is not just restricted to Thailand, in Italy repeater outputs in 145.800-146.000 MHz have caused severe interference to amateur satellites. E22ICQ is to be congratulated for documenting the interference on YouTube. If anyone else is able to upload videos to YouTube showing interference to satellites please let us know.
Watch 30-Oct-2013 OK03fu 145.9375 MHz land station talking in Satellite Bands
E22ICQ holds a Thai Intermediate license that he received on July 27, 2012 (Thai year 2555 BE). In May 2012 Thailand had 246,959 radio amateurs holding the entry level VHF license and only 717 Intermediate and Reciprocal HF licence holders. The reason for the lack of Intermediate licensees is because it has been impossible to sit an exam. The Intermediate exam held in Bangkok on May 19, 2012 was the first to be held in the country for eight years, see http://www.southgatearc.org/news/may2012/thailand_holds_intermediate_exam.htm
A student team from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott Campus recently flew a payload on a NASA balloon launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, N.M. The High-Altitude Student Platform (HASP) flight gave 12 universities from across the nation the chance to conduct research and experiments.
After floating successfully for more than 10 hours at an altitude of 125,000 feet, the HASP gondola containing the payloads was recovered near Wickenburg, Ariz. Embry-Riddle student lead Zach Henney reports that the team is still analyzing the flight data but the results look promising so far.
The Embry-Riddle payload on the HASP flight was an early engineering model of the EagleSat, a small cube-shaped satellite (CubeSat) the students are developing to fly in Earth orbit in late 2015 through NASA’s highly selective CubeSat Launch Initiative. Among its objectives, EagleSat is designed to determine error rates in electronic parts exposed to space radiation. The Embry-Riddle students plan to launch an advanced EagleSat engineering model on next year’s HASP flight.
AMSAT-UK has announced a new FUNcube Forum to cater for the two FUNcube payloads that will be launched in the coming months.
AMSAT-UK 
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