May 17 2011

20th Anniversary of Historic Spaceflight

Helen Sharman GB1MIRHelen Sharman GB1MIR became the United Kingdom’s first astronaut when she blasted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 1250 GMT on May 18, 1991 on her way to the Mir space station

She won her place in space when in 1989 she answered as advertisement she heard on the car radio that said “Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary.”

Helen was selected from over 13,000 applicants to join the scientific space mission Project Juno.

She spent 8 days in space and operated Amateur Radio using her special call sign GB1MIR in the 2m band. While in space she carried out a range of experiments that included studying how weightlessness affects people, plants and the growth of crystals.

Watch a CNN video about her space flight

Helen recently attended the celebration to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight, see
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/april2011/helen_sharman.htm

A picture of Helen Sharman receiving the GB1MIR license from Richard Horton G3XWH can be seen at
http://www.hlc.org.uk/HLC/extra_radio_more.html

May 12 2011

FUNcube Dongle at AMSAT-DL Symposium

On Saturday, May 14, there will be a presentation on the AMSAT-UK FUNcube satellite and Software Defined Radio dongle at the AMSAT-DL Symposium in Bochum.

The presentation titled ‘FUNcube and the amateur radio dongle’ will be given by Jim Heck, G3WGM, secretary of AMSAT-UK.

The AMSAT-DL Symposium and AGM takes place on Saturday, May 14, in the radome of the 20m dish antenna at Bochum, Germany. Visitors to the symposium are welcome.

Symposium information with full list of speakers is at
http://tinyurl.com/AMSAT-DL-AGM2011

You can join the FUNcube Yahoo Group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube/

May 9 2011

Colloquium 2011 – Call For Speakers

This is the first call for speakers for the AMSAT-UK Colloquium 2011 which will be held from Saturday, July 30 to Sunday, July 31 2011.

AMSAT-UK invite speakers, about amateur radio space and associated activities, for this event. They are also invited to submit papers for the “Proceedings” document which will be published at the same time but printed papers are not mandatory. We normally prefer authors to present talks themselves rather than having someone else give them in the authors’ absence. We also welcome “unpresented” papers for the Proceedings document.

Offers of talks should be submitted as soon as possible; the final date for full documents to be received is late-June 2009 in order that the “Proceedings” document be available to participants.

Submissions should be sent *ONLY* to G4DPZ, via the following routes:

e-mail: david dot johnson at blackpepper dot co dot uk

SnailMail: QTHR from www.QRZ.com

AMSAT-UK also invite anyone with requests for Program Topics to submit them as soon as possible to G4DPZ. Invitations for any papers on specific subjects will be included in the future call. Likewise if anyone knows of a good speaker, please send contact and other information to G4DPZ.

73

Dave
G4DPZ

May 9 2011

Getting Started on Amateur Radio Satellites

The PDF article below, written by John Heath G7HIA, was published by the Radio Society of Great Britain in the March 2007 edition of RadCom.

Copyright 2007 Radio Society of Great Britain. For personal use only – no copying, reprinting or distribution without written permission from the RSGB (www.RSGB.org).

Satellites_RadCom_mar07.pdf

May 7 2011

Providing Education Through Amateur Satellites

AMSAT-NA will be present at the 2011 Dayton Hamvention with the theme of ‘Providing Education Through Amateur Satellites’.

The Hamvention takes place May 20-22 and there will be multiple exhibits of the new AMSAT satellites on display.

The AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle Software Defined Radio will be shown decoding CW and BPSK telemetry from a prototype of the ARISSat-1 satellite due to be deployed from the International Space Station in July.

In addition to the CW and BPSK the prototype satellite will also be transmitting FM on 145.950 MHz so that Hamvention visitors can hear it on their HT’s.

AMSAT will be in Booths 444-449 in the Ball Arena, right across from the ARRL area and just inside the door from the Satellite Demonstration area.

The AMSAT Forum takes place Saturday May 21. Moderated by Alan Biddle, WA4SCA you will have a chance to hear and see the latest news of amateur radio in space.

• AMSAT President Barry Baines, WD4ASW will present an AMSAT Status Report

• Alan Kung, BA1DU, CEO of AMSAT-China, will discuss the activities of AMSAT-China.

• Project Manager for ARISSat-1, Gould Smith, WA4SXM, will talk about its operation aboard the ISS, and the planned deployment and operations this summer.

• Tony Monteiro, AA2TX, will discuss the design and status of Project-FOX.

• Alex Harvilchuck, N3NP, will present NextGen CubeSat Program Update.

Further information can be found on the AMSAT-NA website athttp://www.AMSAT.org/

 

 

May 6 2011

AO-51 Having a difficult time

AMSAT Vice-President of Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA reported
the AO-51 Command Team is having a difficult time trying to restore
AO-51 to operation.

Amsat-echo51

The current situation is the satellite will not retain the upload of
the flight software across eclipse. The batteries are in very poor
condition.