G3LTF’s 15 foot (4.5m) Moonbounce dish at Galleywood, Chelmford in 1964 – Credit Peter Blair G3LTF
June 13 is the 50th anniversary of the first UK amateur radio moonbounce (EME) contact which was made by Peter Blair G3LTF from Chelmsford in Essex.
Arecibo 305m diameter dish antenna
The RSGB GB2RS News Service reports:
July 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the first time that amateur signals from the UK reached other parts of the world by bouncing off the moon, a technique now known as moonbounce or earth-moon-earth, EME. In the July 1964 edition of Radio Communications the RSGB announced that at 20.20 GMT on June 13, 1964, G3LTF at Galleywood, Chelmsford, and KP4BPZ in Puerto Rico, made contact on 430 Mc/s [MHz] by bouncing their signals off the moon. Signal reports were RST459 both ways.
A further contact took place one hour later. KP4BPZ was fortunate in having the 1000ft [305m] radio-telescope dish aerial at Arecibo, Puerto Rico at his disposal. G3LTF’s equipment included a 15ft [4.5m] dish aerial and an AF139 transistor preamplifier for reception. Power input to the PA was 150 watts. What is more remarkable is that Peter, G3LTF is still active on moonbounce and is one of the world’s leading pioneers.
The RSGB offers Peter, G3LTF our heartiest congratulations on this 50th anniversary of his achievement.
The Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society (CARS) send their congratulations to Peter for his achievement 50 years ago and all the pioneering EME work he has carried out since.
CARS run short amateur radio training courses. If you’d like to find out more about the hobby speak to Clive G1EUC.
Tel: 01245-224577
Mob: 07860-418835
Email: training2014 at g0mwt.org.uk
Web: http://www.g0mwt.org.uk/training/
In this video ISS Astronaut Alexander Gerst KF5ONO talks about how his grandfather, a radio ham, helped him bounce a signal off the moon (EME) when he was six and the influence amateur radio had on his career.
The LituanicaSAT-1 team have announced activation of the FM transponder.
Dear radio amateurs,
The LituanicaSAT-1 transponder is currently on and should remain so. General rule to find out if the transponder is working at the moment is following: if you can hear CW FM beacon on 437.275 MHz it means that transponder is off, if you cannot hear it – transponder is on.
73, Laurynas Maciulis LY1LM, LY5N
Frequency are approximately 435.1755 MHz (+/- 10 kHz Doppler shift) for the downlink and 145.950 MHz for the uplink with 67 Hz CTCSS.
The tiny satellite is just 10x10x10 cm with a mass of 1.090 kg yet it has a VGA camera and a 145/435 MHz FM voice transponder, designed and built by Lithuanian radio amateurs.
The prototype of the FM repeater has been operating in the home of its designer Žilvinas Batisa LY3H in Elektrėnai, Lithuania. Further information at http://ly3h.epalete.com/?p=303
Engineers Steve Greenland and Andy Strain are in Baikonur, Kazakhstan to prepare UKube-1 for its launch on July 8.
Andy Strain and Steve Greenland in Kazakhstan with UKube-1 and Deployment Pod
UKube-1 carries a set of AMSAT-UK FUNcube boards providing a 435/145 MHz linear transponder and educational telemetry beacon. On the same launch as UKube-1 is the UK research satellite TechDemoSat built at SSTL in Guildford.
UKube-1 communications subsystem:
• 145.840 MHz Telemetry downlink
• 145.915 MHz FUNcube subsystem beacon
• 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
The satellites on the Soyuz-2-1b Fregat-M launch are: Meteor-M 2, SkySat 2, TechDemoSat 1 (TDS 1), AISSat 2, Baumanets 2[pulled from launch manifest], Relek, DX 1, Venta 1[pulled from launch manifest], UKube 1.
UK Astronaut Tim Peake KG5BVI reports that on July 1, 2014, the UK Space Education Office (ESERO-UK) is holding a free conference at the National Science Learning Centre in York.
It is ideal for primary teachers and teaching assistants who are interested in using space as a exciting context for learning.
The conference will introduce Tim’s upcoming mission to the ISS and how space can be used to enhance children’s learning across the primary school curriculum.
Tim is currently training for his 6 month mission, Expedition 46/47, to the ISS which is scheduled for November 2015. The UK communications regulator Ofcom has agreed in principle to issue the permanent Special Callsign of GB1SS to the ISS and it is expected Tim will use that callsign when operating the amateur radio station in the ESA Columbus module.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014, marked the six month anniversary of the launch of the tiny $50SAT / MO-76 PocketQube satellite which is just 5x5x7.5 cm and 210 grams.
Michael Kirkhart KD8QBA has released an update on this remarkable satellite:
We have finally completed the first pass cleanup of the telemetry data provided by all of you. We cannot thank you enough for this data, as it will help us understand how $50SAT/MO-76 has been operating. Keep it coming!
On the Dropbox, you will find a new directory (Telemetry-analysis/Battery-voltage-2014-06-04) containing our first set of processed data, which serves as an initial investigation into the performance of the on-board Li-ion battery. Included in this directory is a spreadsheet with all the battery voltage data we have up to now, in both tabular and graphical form; it consists of 1097 individual telemetry observations. For convenience sake, there is also a copy of the graph in PDF form. Over the past 6 months, the daily average battery voltage has been dropping. A best fit line through all the data has a slope of -0.670 mV per day. The drop, however, has not always been gradual. For instance, there is a large step change of about -60 mV sometime near February 20, 2014. We are not sure what happened here. Anybody out there know what might be going on?
Ignoring the two outliers on the graph, the current low battery voltage is 3521 mV. This has been observed at least 5 times, including twice by yours truly. This, of course, occurs when $50SAT/MO-76 happens to be at its lowest temperature, which has been -28 degrees C until yesterday evening, where I observed a temperature of -29 degrees C. While our depth of discharge on the battery is relatively low (our initial calculations were about 22 mA-hr), it is going through about a -28 degree C to 26 degree C (or possibly higher – this is our highest recorded temperature) and back down to -28 degrees C 14.5 times per day. Does this violate the conditions of the warranty?
As to whether or not the orbit is decaying, a comparison of the current TLEs with a set from early December 2013 show it is, although by a small amount.
Here are the TLEs from December 4, 2013 (element set 7):
2013-066W
1 39436U 13066W 13337.88841924 .00010097 00000-0 12132-2 0 70
2 39436 97.8019 50.2525 0031655 170.6351 189.5525 14.83797851 1855
Here are the TLEs from June 2, 2014 (element set 223):
EAGLE 2
1 39436U 13066W 14152.25170112 .00007510 00000-0 78254-3 0 2235
2 39436 97.7787 226.1156 0024706 303.1274 56.7439 14.89857855 28503
$50SAT Boards
The second to last element on line 2 is the mean motion, in units of orbits per day. From this number, the semi-major axis of the orbit can be computed. On December 4, 2013, it was 6,995.50 km, and on June 2, 2014, it was 6,976.51 km. This means the orbit has decayed by about 19 km during this time period. The orbit has also become slightly less elliptical. The forth element on line 2 is the eccentricity, which has an implied decimal point in front of it. On December 4, 2013, it was 0.0031655, and on June 2, 2014, it was 0.0024706. From this and the computed semi-major axis, the apogee and perigee altitudes are as follows:
December 4, 2013: apogee = 639.64 km, perigee = 595.36 km
June 2, 2014: apogee = 615.75 km, perigee = 581.27 km
The technical challenge we posed to the amateur community to successfully uplink to $50SAT/MO-76 has yet to be met. We have since realized some of the documentation, specifically the Silicon Labs Si4432 data sheet, was not clear on at least one of the needed details. To encourage the amateur radio community to answer our challenge, we will post some information that should be helpful in uplinking to $50SAT/MO-76; look for this sometime in the next few days.
$50SAT/MO-76 has made it onto YouTube! See a video of the excellent talk on $50SAT/MO-76 given by Howie DeFelice, AB2S, and a video of yours truly operating the AMSAT demo station during a $50SAT/MO-76 pass at the Dayton Hamvention.
73
Michael Kirkhart
KD8QBA
$50SAT/MO-76 team
Talk by Howie DeFelice AB2S at the May 14, 2014, PocketQube workshop
(thanks to Gustavo, LW2DTZ, for taking and posting this video)
$50SAT was 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. The transmitter power is just 100 mW on 437.505 MHz (+/-9 kHz Doppler shift) FM CW/RTTY. $50SAT uses the low cost Hope RFM22B single chip radio and PICAXE 40X2 processor.
Michael Kirkhart KD8QBA operates AMSAT demo station during $50SAT/MO-76 pass Friday, May 16
(thanks to Patrick Stoddard, WD9EWK, AMSAT-NA Vice President for Field Operations, for this video)
The Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society (CARS) send their congratulations to Peter for his achievement 50 years ago and all the pioneering EME work he has carried out since.
AMSAT-UK 
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