James Coxon M6JCX launches PICO a 434.301 MHz USB RTTY balloon – Image David Bowkis M0MDB
PICO, a single foil balloon was launched by James Coxon M6JCX on Saturday, October 20, 2012 from Suffolk in the UK. It carried GPS and a miniature radio transmitter sending RTTY (ascii-8) on 434.301 MHz USB running 10 mW output.
During the 19 hour flight it crossed the North Sea and landed somewhere in central Sweden.
First picture from FITSAT-1 on 5840.0 MHz showing the solar panels on the ISS
When the FITSAT-1 CubeSat was deployed from the International Space Station on October 4 it took a picture using the on-board camera. On Friday, October 19 UT, the team successfully downloaded the picture using the high-speed 115.2 kbps data transmitter on 5840.0 MHz.
Steve Greenland of Clyde Space receives the AMSAT-UK FUNcube-2 boards that will be incorporated into UKube-1
On Friday, October 19, after some final testing and characterisation checks completed at the facilities of ISIS BV in Delft, AMSAT-UK handed over the set of three PCBs that form the FUNcube-2 subsystem on the UKube-1 spacecraft to Clyde Space Ltd in Glasgow. Clyde Space are leading the development and assembly of this CubeSat project for the UK Space Agency.
The PCBs were taken to Glasgow in a Pelicase by Graham Shirville G3VZV who handed them to Steve Greenland Systems Engineer at Clyde Space.
Raydel Espinet CM2ESP
Raydel Espinet CM2ESP reports the first national meeting of the Cuban amateur radio satellite group will take place November 8-11 and special event station T47G will be on the air, on both HF and the satellites, during the event.
With great pleasure, on behalf of the Cuban Satellite Group named “Grupo de Radioaficionados para Operaciones Satelitales”, GROS, The Coordination Board wants to announce the following.
During November 8th to November 11th the Group will be having its First National Meeting (very similar to a symposium) in the Province of Camagüey. Many of the GROS’s Members and many other ham guests will be attending this Meeting. The meeting motto is “Celebrating the first year of an idea come true”. The idea of creating a Cuban Satellite Group and the first works began on November, 2011, and this is the First Anniversary.
CAMSAT CAS-2 banner at the Friedrichshafen Ham Radio 2012 event
CAMSAT are building two micro-satellites CAS-2A1 and CAS-2A2 to be combined into a binary star system for amateur radio communication and education.
There will be a radio link between two satellites when the satellites are in suitable positions in their orbits, so that the amateur radio communication coverage can be extended. Both spacecraft are 25kg 270x270x250mm and are planning to launch from Taiyuan into a sun synchronous, 1000km apogee, 99.5 degree orbit.
Reception of FITSAT-1 5840.0 MHz downlink using FUNcube Dongle SDR
This video by radio amateur Tetsurou Satou JA0CAW shows reception in Japan of the 5840.0 MHz downlink from the FITSAT-1 (aka NIWAKA) CubeSat that was deployed from the ISS on October 4.
He used a 38cm dish with a down-converter to an IF of 1284 MHz, a BGA2717 LNA and the AMSAT-UK FUNCube Dongle SDR with HDSDR software.
AMSAT-UK 
You must be logged in to post a comment.